


Jeong Deconstructed

by Diglossia



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-11-07 08:32:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 52,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11055237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diglossia/pseuds/Diglossia
Summary: Senior year was supposed to be a breeze. But for Jiang and Cheng2, it’s turning out to be anything but.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> “He had also shown it to Laumonier and to Greenmantle and to Valquez and to Mackey and to Xi, but that was to be expected because he was a scoundrel and could not help himself.”
> 
> This is a gift for [FalseCamaro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gandalfgirl579/pseuds/FalseCamaro) based off her versions of the Dream Pack and the Vancouver crowd from [As Dreamers Do](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8869339/chapters/20334232). Please enjoy!

"I just want it sold," the owner says. "Do what you have to."

The real estate agent knows it won't be much trouble. She's the one who sold it to the current owner four years ago. Half the houses on this block were under her name at some point. Mansions in Henrietta aren't long-term investments. The boys graduate, the families leave. New families come. Circle of life.

But this mansion is somewhat unusual and not just because of the name attached to it.

She catalogs the rooms, the stairs, the front hall, looking for damage and finding little. Only the den's left.

The movers did what they could. The room's bare.

She was hesitant to come down here. It's a silly thing to think, but she's always believed rooms have presence. They soak up the strongest emotions of their occupants and hold onto them for years.

This room feels like many things. Ennui, hope, loneliness, the emotions of the fantastically rich and fantastically bored. Despair, a feeling that infuses the whole house, holds strong here.

She shouldn't be surprised.

She surveys the walls and carpet. The former will have to be repainted; the latter replaced. There are cigarette burns in one corner and is that a hole? Floorboards will need to be replaced, too.

She approaches the hole in the carpet, wide in circumference as a basketball. It's black around the edges, the fibers melted rather than charred. With a start, she realizes the hole goes all the way through the floorboards. She crouches to touch it.

Black smoke billows from the hole. A scent like burning rubber fills the air, so thick she chokes on it. Sparks scour the inside of her throat.

Then there's laughter. Bright, delighted laughter in the tenor of a teenage boy.

She screams.


	2. Chapter 2

"You're positive you don't want to come with?"

Rutherford's already got his coat on, dress clothes underneath. He looks nice. Sharp.

"That's today?" Cheng2 asks like he hasn't doubled his usual daily caffeine intake in four hours. It gives him something to focus on- the pounding in his head, the vibrations of his skin, the twitching at the corners of his eyes that he can almost, almost blame on the caffeine.

"Yeah," Rutherford says, "it is."

Cheng2's legs ache. He walked for two hours yesterday, to nowhere and back again. He would have driven but lately he can't escape the feeling his passenger seat isn't as empty as it should be.

Cheng2 doesn't ask why Rutherford's going and Rutherford doesn't ask what Cheng2's running from.

Cheng2 waits till Rutherford's gone to swallow another pep pill. He doesn't want a lecture. Nothing anyone says is gonna make him stop.

He cleans his side of the room. He needs to burn the caffeine off or his heart will explode.

He wants to lie on his bed until it does.

He strips the sheets and shoves them in his hamper. He takes a rag to the tops of every surface until the dust has gone away. He sweeps and he vacuums and he takes down every shirt and pair of shorts he never wears and puts them in a pile next to the trash to be donated.

It's not enough. He thinks about going for another walk. He thinks about running away.

He cleans Rutherford's side of the room. He vacuums his side again. It's not enough. He sits down on his bed and tries to calm his heart, his head.

As Cheng2 takes another swig of Redbull, the flavor dulled by too many repetitions, he imagines phantom hands on him. For the life of him, he can't tell whether they're blows or caresses.


	3. Chapter 3

One of us had to come.

That's what Rutherford plans to say should anyone ask. One of us had to come. The Vancouver crowd holds no lingering ill will to Kavinsky's former faction. In light of what happened, they will show their respects.

Entering the Wright Theater, Rutherford chooses a row in the left-hand aisle neither too close to the front nor to the back. He isn't here to make a scene. This is a statement of solidarity, an acknowledgement of what was.

There's a portrait resting on the metal easel in front of the stage. It's flattering, relatively. There wasn't much that could be done with the subject. He looks almost respectable in his Aglionby uniform, tie tucked into his sweater, one shoulder deliberately lowered at what had to be the photographer's request. Rutherford searches within himself some emotion for this photograph. He comes up with none.

They say it was quiet. One of his friends was there, keeping watch, when he passed. Soft, slow, painless.

What a contrast.

People are filing in now. Seniors mostly, with a few juniors interspersed. Engle, Carruthers, O'Connor. One or two teachers make the effort of an appearance. It's almost appalling, how empty the theater is, how few bother to show.

Somehow, Rutherford doesn't think his own memorial service would be much fuller.

That realization is not pleasant nor is the accompanying thought that, if circumstances were different, there might be someone very like him sitting in an uncomfortable wrought iron and cushion seat right now. Rutherford swallows down the unpleasantries.

Blake Skovron and Lafayette Swan are making their way to the front row unconsciously reserved for them. Skov goes left but Swan moves right with a jerk of his head. Skov follows with an air of quiet frustration. They leave a seat to their left, nominally for Jiang, who has yet to arrive, if he plans to.

There's a clearing of throats and a rustling of pamphlets as people wait for the headmaster to arrive. The air is impatient rather than somber. Everyone wants to get on with their Saturday.

Soon, Rutherford will add his flame to the row of candles and take a white carnation from the vase. He'll offer respect in body that he can't in mind. He existed, his actions will say, and he is not forgotten. That's all Rutherford can offer. Only the people who cared for him can offer more and not many of them seem to be coming.

Rutherford knows where Cheng2 is.

Where, Rutherford wonders as Headmaster Child enters the stage, is Jiang?

 

* * *

 

The morning air is warm and just barely touched with humidity, the sticky thickness a last holdout of summer. It's hot enough sleeveless shirts and shorts remain popular outside of fashion statements. Fall has come, school has started, and the weather would rather go back three months.

Jiang would, too.

He glances at the sky with its fluffy, white clouds and blinding sun and he hates that today, of all days, time travel should be impossible.

"Do you want me to come with you?" Henry Cheng asks as Jiang's pulling up his boxers. Gruber Hall's brick wall is digging into his back. His cheeks feel pebbled from being pressed against it so long.

"Why?" Jiang asks. "For moral support?"

Cheng's perfectly shaped eyebrows furrow at the words. "Perhaps."

"Don't need it." Jiang does up the button of his slacks. He debates kissing Cheng's chin. He decides against it. "You've got dirt on your knees."

Cheng rushes to brush it off.

Jiang uses that opportunity to slip away.

 

* * *

 

He's later than he meant to be. Naturally, he was shooting for late to show his disdain for the whole affair but the ceremony is already underway when he arrives.

Studiously not looking at the wreathed photo in front of Headmaster Child, he slips into the seat next to Swan.

"You're late," Swan murmurs.

Jiang doesn't answer. Eyes are on them right now, more than usual.

Headmaster Child pauses to give Jiang a disapproving look

"Ilya," the headmaster continues, subtly mispronouncing the name, "was perhaps not the greatest of academicians. The question was often posed how long he would remain with us here at Aglionby. He was, however, beloved by his friends and the many who knew him." He glances about the auditorium, as if his words could change the obvious reality. There's hardly anyone here.

"Remember, gentlemen, as bleak as this day might seem, It is as the vaunted Aeschylus wrote: 'there is nothing certain in a man's life except this: that he must lose it.' We shall bear Ilya's loss gravely but, I can hope, not sadly. For Ilya..." Child drones on, his words fading out as Jiang stops caring to listen.

Jiang can barely stomach this charade. That picture up there wasn't of Proko. It was taken a few months ago for the yearbook. While it looked like him, that boy wasn't him, not in any way that mattered. Other than Swan, Skov, and Jiang himself, not a damn person here had been close enough to see that. This was a display of misplaced guilt-  _I should have gotten to know him better_ \- or morbid fascination.

Fuck this shit. Jiang stands up.

"Where are you going?" Swan asks, reaching out to grab his sleeve. It's a weak, ineffectual gesture. Swan's not really trying to stop him. Worse, he doesn't have the energy to.

"It's too stuffy in here. I can't fucking breathe." Jiang tears at his collar, loosening his tie in the process.

He misjudges the weight of the theater door and sends it flying into the jamb. Who cares? Not Jiang.

He fishes in his pocket for his pack, only to come up with a crushed cigarette and loose tobacco. He throws it all into the bushes and wipes his hand on his slacks. He pretends he can't feel it shaking.

Jiang takes a few deep, steadying breaths. He runs his hand over his short hair. The shaking stops but all that energy is just under the surface now, waiting for an excuse to come out.

He left his keys back in the dorm. Otherwise, he would barrel out of here, let speed and the highway wind burn this out of him.

Jiang can't stand this. Swan so meek. Skov so impassive. Not Proko's picture up there looking polished and human and everything like who Proko could have become if he had ever gotten the chance to  _be_.

Underneath everything lies the same primal rage at the real culprit, the one who started this all, who no one's publicly mourning because  _the_ _administration doesn't want to be seen glorifying things_  and the student body doesn't care. 

One of the double doors swings open. Someone comes to stand next to him. The heat from his body and the faint smell of his cologne tells Jiang who it is.

Jiang bares his teeth. Without looking at the other person, he asks, "Fucking following me again, Cheng?"

Cheng sighs. "Can we not be civil today?"

He looks good in Zegna. Jiang should have realized Cheng's pigheadedness and unwillingness to let his fashion choices go unused would overrule a simple command. He should have been clearer in his words and more open to Cheng ignoring them but today is decidedly not a day he wanted Cheng to not listen and so he did not leave room for such.

"Not when you're showing up places you have no business being. I thought I made it clear I didn't want you coming."

"I knew him."

Jiang scoffs. "You knew of him. It's not the same." He rubs his hand over his mouth. "You shouldn't be here."

"And where should I be?"

Jiang's glare is as swift as it is ferocious. "You know this shit isn't real."

"It's a memorial." Cheng spreads his hands magnanimously. "I'm here to memorialize."

Jiang turns his head away in disgust.

"He didn't deserve this," Cheng adds in a quieter tone.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Okay."

"Okay," Jiang repeats nastily. "Okay. Is that all you can say?"

"I don't know what you want me to say."

"I don't want you to say anything. I want you to not be here. I want this to not be happening." Jiang flings his hands wide. "All those people in there, acting like they ever gave a shit about him. This is bullshit, Cheng, of the highest order. And I don't need you here to make it worse."  _To see it_ , he means.  _To make it real._  Cheng's presence solidifies this as Aglionby, as life. Jiang doesn't get to wake up tomorrow and pretend it didn't happen because Cheng is here right now, confirming it did.

Cheng looks hurt again.

"I don't understand why you're being like this..."

"That's pretty fucking telling, don't you think?" Jiang snaps. 

Cheng looks really hurt now but Jiang's not in a mood to make amends. Today is just one more reminder of how shitty life's been recently. He needs space, not Cheng showing up places he shouldn't.

Slowly, Cheng asks, "Do you want to take a break?" as if they're dating.

"Fuck off, Cheng," Jiang snarls.

"If that's what you want." Every word drips with the hope that Jiang will retract his.

Jiang won't. Today is not the day for Cheng to be up his ass.

Fuck, he just wants this shit to be over. He wants people to stop shooting him pitying looks, to stop acting like he's an animal in a zoo. What's Jiang going to do next? Swan's falling to pieces. Skov's too relaxed to be interesting. Fuckers are waiting for Jiang to start shit. Maybe he'll blow up the school. Maybe he'll kill himself. What's Kavinsky's most contentious follower going to do?

He's going to cut people off and out. Fake, all of them. Never his friends, only out to take what they could from Kavinsky's offerings. Now he's dead and cold. What’s Jiang going to do next?

"Is everything alright?" a new voice asks.

Jiang's eyes flash.

"Really?" he snaps. "You brought Rutherford?"

"I didn't-" Cheng begins but Jiang is already done. Done with this farce, done with Cheng and his ilk, done with a reality that lets false memorial services occur when the real Proko never got one, done with fucking Aglionby treating them like a sideshow.

"Will I see you Friday?" Cheng calls as Jiang storms off.

A tiny part of Jiang wants to pause. This is Cheng, after all. He probably doesn't even know what he did wrong.

He keeps going.

 

* * *

 

Rutherford wasn't expecting a polite conversation when he followed them. Sure, Jiang had been their friend once but years have passed since. Koh has filled the intervening hole.

A normal person would ask how much Rutherford heard. Cheng doesn't.

So Rutherford says the only thing he can.

"He'll come around."

 


	4. Chapter 4

Parked in the shade a few yards from the theater is Skov's RX-7. Jiang stoops down and fishes inside its wheel well. Grasping his prize, a black fob with a shiny key attached, he stands up and uses it to open Skov's car door.

It's an effortless slide into the neoprene seat, steering wheel familiar under his hands. A few minutes and everything's adjusted from Skov's much greater height.

Jiang presses his forehead against the wheel. It's calming but it's not enough.

He can't be at Aglionby now. School is too present, too real. He needs...something else.

He needs to drive.

Three-hundred fifty horsepower isn't the fastest Jiang's ever driven. There was a car once, seven of them in fact, all in a row, that were faster, stronger, more agile than this. Jiang had hoped they'd fall to pieces when the world did but no. Now they sit in a field in an abandoned fairground, a relic of what was and will never be again.

Jiang wanted to burn them to the ground. Swan said no, there needed to be something physical, so things couldn't fade from collective memory. Look how that turned out.

The drive is all muscle. There's hardly anyone on the road, just a few trucks and the odd, beat-up car. Locals, going about their boring, tedious lives.

This is all temporary, Jiang used to have to remind himself. A rung on a never-ending ladder upwards, each one falling away as he climbed it. Ten years from now, he wouldn't look back. This was never supposed to be a place he remembered fondly.

This was not what he meant when he thought that, not what he meant when he left home with his sister's money and his mother's best friend's name. His chest wasn't supposed to ache every morning as he drowned in disjointed memory.

He's pulled into a driveway before he even knows it. The engine cuts off, keys slip into his pocket, and he's out, the RX-7 left on the pristine asphalt.

He doesn't look at the front of the mansion as he goes around to the side.

They’re saying the real estate agent got spooked and ran out of here white as a sheet.

Jiang doesn’t know about all that but the house hasn’t been put on the market and it hasn’t been lived in in months.

This isn't where he meant to end up but it'll do.

The touchpad on the side door still recognizes his thumbprint, the metal unpleasantly warm to the touch.

Inside is bare, hollow, the mansion a shell of its former glory. Jiang’s lived in better and he’s lived in worse. He isn’t here to compare. He trails his hand along the wall as he walks down the steps to the den.

The den. You could say that place was more intimate than Kavinsky’s bedroom, which, since he never slept, was true in a sense. This house was alternately a prison and a center of power, upstairs hers, downstairs his, a clash every time their paths crossed. Jiang could never tell who disrespected who more, who was the parent and who the child.

Someone should have done something. No one did. She was exiled and she was bitter and he was a terrible son. Somehow, that made it all okay.

The only thing left is a field of cars and an empty house and a rapidly fading memory of a boy who wasn't simply destined to be more but already  _was._

And a barren den, probably painted over and aired out, made ready for the next four-year Aglionby family, who will know nothing except a scrap of a rumor that this place belonged to someone once.

Jiang shakes his head. His thoughts are a jumble of half-poetic nonsense and, much as he'd rather they weren't, why shouldn’t they be? He’s outlived a god and a dream and it’s fucking bullshit that he’s standing here and it never occurred to him that one day this could happen.

Why the fuck didn’t any of them see it?

It’s been six months and Jiang doesn’t have an answer.

So he keeps walking down the carpeted steps to a room that was once a sanctum sanctorum and is now nothing but an empty space.

He steels himself for the last step, eyes fixed on the carpet so he won’t have to face the inevitable till the last second, and, finally, looks up.

The room is not empty. They didn’t move his things. They di-

Jiang was not prepared for this. What the fuck kind of person leaves this shit? He moves to go back up the stairs. This is the exact opposite of what he signed up for.

A voice reaches him from out of what should be nothingness and Jiang stills.

“Damn, bitch, you can’t stay a minute? It’s only been forever.”

Kavinsky smiles and Jiang can’t decide whether he wants to punch him or run.


	5. Chapter 5

“Are you religious?” Prokopenko asked, reaching a hand out to the sky. He was high and Cheng2 was, too, and they were both having trouble remembering who they had got the weed from. The grass was warm and scratchy under their backs, the air hazy and green-smelling.

“No,” Cheng2 replied. It was hard to be when you weren’t raised that way and religion was capitalized and attached to family members you never visited or even met. “My dads’ parents are.” He didn’t specify that he meant more than one dad and more than one religion. It added up to the same answer.

“I don’t think I am, either.” Proko scratched at his arm. “What do you think happens when you die?”

“I don’t know,” Cheng2 said. He didn’t want to think about it.

“Do you think- do you think you can get a second chance? Like, you see the white light and come back?”

“I dunno,” Cheng2 said. When his stepdad’s grandmother died, there had been long, mean conversations with his parents over the phone. His grandmother had loved him but she hadn’t loved his lifestyle, they’d said. He would not be welcome at the funeral. He had gone, because shame was not something Jerome had ever been accused of having, and he had been turned away at the service. There were few second chances in this life. Why would there be any after it? “Can we can change the subject?”

Prokopenko did because he was surprisingly nice that way but there was a look on his face like his words had a point and Cheng2 just wasn’t getting it.

“Cheng2,” a voicesays, wrenching Cheng2 from his thoughts. He looks up.

“Class is ended,” Lee-Squared saysnot unkindly.

“Oh.” Cheng2 smiles sheepishly. “Guess I was daydreaming.”

He gathers his things and they leave the classroom.

 

* * *

 

Lately, all Cheng2 seems to do is daydream. Or if not that, doze off and dream. He thinks he learned once that you aren't supposed to dream when you take naps. If you do, it means you're severely sleep-deprived. Cheng2 thinks he must be.

"You look tired," people say to him and Cheng2 has to admit that he does becausehe is. There are lines under his eyes cutting into his cheeks, circles less black than greenish-purple.

"Don't you think that's a lot?" Koh asks when Cheng2 downs three Redbulls before 7 am. He takes a couple aspirin in hopes it will mitigate the effects.

"Are you really going to mix those?" SickSteve demands. Weed and energy drinks and alcohol. Cheng2's just trying to survive.

Hegives out platitudes and wry grins, claps on shoulders and rude gestures. The answer is always yes. He is tired. It is a lot. Obviously, he's going to mix them; he's already done it.

He's not trying to cause lasting damage.

He's trying to convince himself what he's seeing isn't real.

 

* * *

 

It's him. Of that, Cheng2 is completely certain.

It's him and this is happening and Cheng2 can't stop it.

He wakes up and that fucking thing is grinning at him from the end of his bed. It sits at an empty desk in the back of the class and leers. Cheng2 can't drive alone anymore. If he tries, it's there, sitting in his passenger seat, watching him.

He won't tell Rutherford, though. He'll pretend terror doesn't wake him every morning before he'll bring his roommate into this. Rutherford doesn't know what went down sophomore year and Cheng2 isn't about to tell him.

Prokopenko is a secret that shouldn't be a secret. Cheng2 never meant for him to be a secret. But when one person dies and another nearly does, you stop thinking secrets are things you shouldn't have.

 

* * *

 

In Cheng2's room at Litchfield, he has a small collection of books for personal enjoyment. They're mostly non-fiction, Freakonomics, The Wealth of Nations, The Ascent of Money, that sort of thing. Some he reads, some are gifts people think he wants to read that he keeps out of conscience. A couple comic books that he and Koh share.

The standout is a hardcover copy of a children's book. The Velveteen Rabbit is not a book Cheng2 ever read as a child but it's one he now knows nearly by heart.

It's a story that's simultaneously bizarre and perfectly normal for its genre and nothing at all like what Cheng2 thought he would read obsessively.

Which he does. For the last few months, he's gone over its dog-eared pages hundreds of times, searching for something but unsure what.

It's about a rabbit who wants to become real and who does.

 _There was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid._ That's how it starts.The wording is just strange enough to indicate the age of the book.

Cheng2 bought this a couple months back, dropped $8.99 on Ebay and got it a few days later. He left it in its packaging when it came, just put in a corner of his room and pretended to forget about it.

It wasn't until September that he picked it up and tore open the cardboard.

The book was more worn than the description had indicated, though too much time had passed to return it. It didn't matter. Inside, the ink was still legible, the pages barely worn. 

During the first read, Cheng2 found the entire thing wastoo fanciful for his tastes, a silly story with painfully heavy undertones. Over the months or rereads, he's changed his opinion. The Velveteen Rabbit shouldn't be a children's classic, it's much too heavy for that. A toy is loved, abandoned, loved again, slated to be burned, and, through magic, becomes real. It's a story of desire and loss and ambiguity of the highest order.

It was Prokopenko's favorite book.

And for that, Cheng2 will read it again.

 

* * *

 

When did it first come to him? Late August, early September, when school had yet to start and the dorms were already filling. Litchfield had come alive, Mrs. Woo welcoming her boys backwith copious amounts of _pajeon_ and _doenjang jjigae_ , SickSteve's favorites and everyone else's okay-ites. Until he got sick of them, the entire downstairs of the Victorian would be filled with the intermingled scents of scallions, garlic, and bean curd. It's a smell Cheng2 associated with home, though neither of his dads' places smell anything like it.

It wasn't then then. Cheng2 remembers being spooked by the ghost being in his and Rutherford's room because it had migrated.

Aglionby. The school grounds. That was where it came to him.

A hot day, stifling with late autumn humidity. Classes had long ended. Cheng2 had stayed back for tutoring. It must have been four o'clock when he saw them.

A breathless laugh. A piece of wit. The Fisker with Cheng in the passenger seat and another boy leaning over him. Lips meeting.

Something like hot, sick jealousy burned through Cheng2's core.

 _He doesn't want you_ ,the phantasm said, the words so right that Cheng2 didn't consider they were nothing Prokopenko would have ever said, _but I do. Come with me, Henry._

He just wanted to be wanted. A lot of things could be overlooked whenthatwas all you had in mind.

And so, when the ghost or astral projection or whatever first came to him, Cheng2 didn't question it. He thought, _maybe this is our second chance._

 

* * *

 

"You deserve better." 

Cheng2 said that once, not meaning heshould be Prokopenko's better. There wasn't a chance in hell they could ever make this something real. But Proko deserved friends who didn't leave bruises and nail tracks on his skin. He deserved someone who would notice when he was gone.

Something had happened to Proko between freshman and junior year, some byproduct of growing up. He'd become meaner, less charismatic, more prone to skip classes and flunk tests. He had become Joseph Kavinsky's closest companion and, rumor had it, his floozy. Most people had written him off.

Most people wrote Cheng2 off, too.

Why was it so bad to want to make people happy? What was so wrong with devoting yourself to a person with presence? Cheng2 heard what people said about Proko and he knew they said the same behind his own back.

His ZR1 could stand up to Proko's Golf and no one but Kavinsky noticed when they talked late into the night or when night became morning and they hadn't moved away from each other in hours. Occasionally, K's people would come to check up on Proko but, as time went on, they paid less attention to their pack mate, more to their individual interests.

Even Jiang, who had once been so adamant on Proko's attention, began to fade away. They both knew where he had gone, whose arms he was embracing. They referenced it. They didn't talk about it.

And then Ronan Lynch joined their fold. Before, he had always been a loose cannon, Gansey's poorly restrained pitbull. But sometime in January or February, he started coming up in conversation and Cheng2 knew Proko's misery.

Weeks later, Cheng2 would do a series of stupid things and Proko's anything would stop being his problem but this was before that, when Cheng2 saw Kavinsky slipping and he thought there was still a chance Proko could get away.

"You deserve better," he told Proko, being careful not to think of his own friend group, how it had fractures radiating from the core, growing larger every time SickSteve said something unkind or Cheng something untrue. They were friends of circumstance. What would be left when the circumstances were gone?

"I don't deserve anything," Prokopenko replied.

Why did he have to talk like that? Cheng2 had thought at the time, anger building, warning signs flashing that he was too involved and about to do something idiotic. No one should be so hopeless at seventeen.

And now he's crystallized just like that, a ghost at the edge of Cheng2's bed, a voice in his head. There was no one left for him to go to, no one who truly cared.

Cheng2 doesn't sleep now. Instead, he leaves his room in the middle of the night and he goes to the bathroom and talks to what's left of Prokopenko for hours, hoping he's quiet enough his housemates won't hear. He turns in his seat in class and Proko waves from a desk everyone else thinks is empty. He stares out the window and Proko is on the other side, blowing on it and drawingcrude designs in the condensation.

Cheng2 wants, so badly, for him to be Real.

 

* * *

 

"Hey, man," Carruthers says. He grips Cheng2's shoulder. The contact is neither welcome nor un-. It's weird. "You doing a'right? Rutherford said you were feeling a little," his voice drops, "under the weather."

Cheng2 pauses. He fakes a grin. "I'm good. Just one of those days."

"Yeah, yeah. Well, hope you feel better soon."

Carruthers is about to walk past when RoboBee lands on Cheng2's shoulder, Cheng checking up. Absentmindedly,Cheng2 lifts a hand to stroke its metal back

Carruthers is watching.

"It's just a toy," Cheng2 says. "Cool, right?"

"Yeah," Carruthers says, voice thick. "Can I touch it?"

Cheng2 doesn't know how Cheng would feel about that. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Oh, is it dangerous?"

_"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"_

_"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."_

_"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit._

_"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse because he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."_

_"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"_

_"It doesn't happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. By the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."_

Would RoboBee count as Real? Cheng certainly loves it enough. 

"Nah, just-" Cheng2 shrugs. Chengdoesn't like people messing with his stuff.

"No prob," Carruthers says, lifting his hand from Cheng2's shoulder. "Forget I asked."

 

* * *

 

Cheng2's breath mists in the otherwise warm night air. Sweat turns to ice on the back of his neck. Rutherford is with Ryang and so he speaks to the boy standing by his bedroom window.

"What can I do to help you?" Cheng2 asks. "How can I get you to move on?"

Prokopenko just looks at the book spread across Cheng2's lap and smiles.

 

* * *

 

_"Wasn't I Real before?" asked the Rabbit._

_"You were Real to the Boy," the Fairy said, "because he loved you. Now you shall be Real to every one."_


	6. Chapter 6

"When," Kavinsky asks, icy fingers trailing along Jiang's jawline, nails scraping against his throat, "are you going to tell the others about me?"

"Never," Jiang replies. "But keep asking. See if anything changes."

Kavinsky smirks and lets him go.

 

* * *

 

There are things a person should not do. If, perhaps, you were to say that Jiang should not stay in that mansion, that he should not entertain what was most definitely not the boy he once known, you would be right.

And you would be wrong.

You would be wrong because the dead do not mingle idly with the living. Joseph Kavinsky was not harmless in life. If he is here now, it is for a reason and not a good one.

Jiang could wipe his hands of this mess. He could walk away and not look back. Instead, he leaves that first day and he goes back. He returns so often days blur together, becoming a sticky mass, a block of incomprehensible time. Is it the first or the fifth, the seventh or the ninth? Jiang can't be bothered to care.

There is a house and in that house a very dead boy. Containing him, entertaining him is all that matters.

It is Jiang's duty to keep Kavinsky amused. That must be why he came back here, why he comes back here. That is the only explanation. They were never friends but Jiang did belong to the boy-king, in a way. He knows what Kavinsky wants to hear. He repeats gossip and news, what Morris has told him, what Engel has. Kavinsky's legacy is alive and well, Jiang lies. They remember the Fourth. That part is true, at least.

It's not real but that doesn't stop Jiang going back to the house every other day. Not every day. That's too much. But every other is enough. Kavinsky is hungry for gossip, for news of what he left behind.

He claims not to remember what happened.

He says he remembers surviving. How, he doesn't know.

But Jiang's not stupid.

Something's not right. This K's not right. But he needs to stay here, in this house. No one else can know about this. Of that, Jiang is absolutely certain.

He distracts Kavinsky. They watch movies Jiang doesn't pay attention to, too entranced by how close the dead are to the living, and they play video games he has memorized in his bones. There's alcohol and pot and strange drugs with contents known only to dreams.

K regales him with stories Jiang's never heard, half-truth, half-fiction. They're liars, the both of them, only K's stories were always more fantastical, always more edged in truth. He tells Jiang of a boyhood and parents and what the first few weeks at Aglionby were like, of meeting Swan and Skov and Jiang. Jiang listens, pointing out absurdities, blatant untruths. He listens to K laugh.

If they had been friends, they might have done these things in life. They didn't, of course, but they might have.

There are so many possibilities dead and dying in that den.

Some days Jiang refuses to entertain. He goes to that mansion and screams at what is left of Kavinsky.  _You idiot, how could you! He depended on you!_

_We buried him and no one even knew!_

(We being Jiang and Skov. K was too busy dreaming and Skov wouldn't let Swan touch the dirt. The first blow, Jiang now sees, that began the crumbling of the brick and mortar of their relationship.)

The words bring no remorse to the ghost's sunglasses. Jiang wants to rip them off his face, wants to stare straight into the hell he expects to find behind them, burning coal, a portal to another dimension.

He wants to but his hand falters.

He has a duty.

And so afternoons turn to nights, nights to days, days to days plural, too many to count. Everything blends together, the mansion, school, time itself. There is only one thing worth focusing on: a room and a person wanting to get out, held back, kept amused by these visits where Jiang humbles himself to tolerate what he never could before.

Where are you these days? No one asks.  _How are you coping? Were you there, did you see? Did you know?_

_Before, that is._

Their eyes bulge with questions, their mouths ache to form the words.

No one asks the questions, not to Jiang at least. He is lost and they are done with him, as if they ever wanted anything past test keys or dream drugs or invitations to places Jiang could go. He has not lost his use, not entirely, but the world has shifted.

Did you know? Before. They won't ask Jiang but they'll ask Skov. Swan, too. Did you know? A subtle accusation of assistance. Did you know? Because, if Jiang did, the implication goes, he wouldn't have done anything to stop it. Did you know?

 _Did_ they know? Did they know that Martin Kavinsky's bullet didn't miss, that Kavinsky was a god among men, brought low by his own self, not Lynch of all people? Did they know gods plural walked among them, magicians and witches and psychics, too?

Of course not. No one around here knew anything.

There were drugs and forgeries and magical places in the woods, things that stayed when they'll all sobered and realized not everything they experienced was in their heads.

But these aren't things to tell, if any of them would even want to tell, and no one asks Jiang anything, as if they're afraid he'll say yes.

It's good, then, that it's not these ignorant masses Jiang is protecting when he steps into that mansion. He would let them suffer any day. Twice a person has died in the midst, so many more had suffered, and what have they ever done? Nothing

No, it is not them Jiang is protecting.

He stands up.

"I'm leaving," he tells Kavinsky, who mock-pouts.

"What, need to go to school?" he taunts.

"Yeah," Jiang says, shrugging on his coat. "I'll be back later."

Kavinsky rolls his eyes and mimes sucking a cock. By the time Jiang's at the top of the stairs, he's already absorbed in _Borderlands 2_.

 

* * *

 

Jiang swings into the school parking lot, the guard yelling at him for going too fast, and slams on his brakes. He gets out, ignoring the guard's continued bellowing. Two sophomores are gaping at him. Jiang sneers and flips them off. Let them admire his parking job. No one was using those three spots anyway.

The guard's trying to get Jiang to come to his booth. Jiang doesn't even bother to shake his head. With a click of his thumb, he locks the car, then shoves the fob in his pocket before heading off to Borden House.

He's not late enough there's not a throng of people inside and outside the building. Their presence makes Jiang grit his teeth and glare. Before, he would have challenged anyone who looked at him, now he just wants to keep moving.

He climbs the stairs to the second floor, intent only on getting to class. 

He isn't paying attention to the people around him. Mostly, Jiang doesn't have to. Anyone wanting to mess with him has long since learned to read his face and leave him alone.

So he isn't paying attention and neither is the other person and that inattention means he and another boy collide in the halls.

"Watch it," Jiang says.

"You watch it," they snap back and Jiang is ready to _go_.

He slams them into the wall, fists clenched in their sweater, and belatedly realizes who he has pinned. Jiang drops his hands in disgust.

"Stay in your lane, Broadway."

Cheng2 looks startled for a moment before an unkind look settles on his face. "Why? You and Cheng broke it off so he's not here to-"

Jiang's fist slams into his gut. Cheng2 gasps.

"Fight!" someone yells. There's a crowd forming. Jiang could not give less of a shit.

He goes for Cheng2's throat, one quick punch that makes him double over gagging. Then he grabs Cheng2’s gelled hair and brings a knee into his face.

Cheng2 has a foot and a half on Jiang but for reasons that are beyond Jiang considering that fucking mouth, he's never learned to fight. His loss. Jiang wipes his hands on his slacks, revolted by even a few seconds' contact. Cheng2 straightens up and Jiang plants one steel-toed boot in the center of his chest and shoves. Cheng2 stumbles backwards.

He kneels to pick up something on the floor- a pen. Holding it like a butterfly knife, Cheng2 straightens up. Jiang barks a laugh. There are a hundred things he could do with that. Cheng2 might know one.

"Do you even have the _balls_ ," he's about to ask when someone interrupts.

"Hey, hey, hey," Carruthers says, shoving them apart with surprising force, "can't we try to get along?"

"This motherfucker needs to look where he's going," Jiang snarls.

"You ran into me," Cheng2 snarls back, looking like he wants to say something about Jiang being three feet tall and easy to overlook. Oh, Jiang could go for days.

"Professor Milo," Carruthers says loudly, adding a fake laugh, "how are you today, my good sir? We were just having a nice, civil discussion."

The English teacher isn't fooled in the slightest. "What is the meaning of this, Mr. Broadway? Jiang?"

Jiang cuts his eyes at Milo, in reaction to the words and the slight. He makes sure to paint "the whole concept of administrative authority is barely worthy of the disdain it engenders" across his narrowed gaze. Cheng2, who isn't even being looked at and whose upper lip is rapidly swelling, gives Jiang a stinkeye a fifth grader would be proud of.

"They were just talking," Carruthers replies when neither answers. "Pupil to pupil."

Milo isn't impressed. "Is that so? Guidance office, gentlemen. Mr. Carruthers, would you first escort Mr. Broadway to the nurse's office? Jiang, a word?"

Jiang doesn't want anything to do with this man. He stays sullenly where he is.

"I understand you've been experiencing difficult times lately but this is no way to act-"

 

* * *

 

"For real, my dude?" Carruthers asks as they take the stairs down to the first floor. He's holding onto Cheng2's arm as if getting punched by Cheng's brat would render anyone an invalid. "You're still going at it?"

"I don't want to talk about it." What's there to talk about it? They're not friends, they never were, and Jiang's a pain in the ass Cheng can't let go of.

"You should watch out with that one." Carruthers leans forward. "I've heard he's gone a bit screwy since the event."

"What event?"

"You know." Carruthers mimes an explosion. "The _event_."

"Oh, yeah." Cheng2 can't think right now. His head is such a blur. Why is Carruthers talking to him? "Right. It's nothing."

"It wouldn't happen to be," Carruther's voice draws in a hush, "trouble in paradise?"

Cheng2's eyebrows pull together. "What?"

"What?" Carruthers echoes, blank-faced. He's stopped, forcing Cheng2 to do the same.

"You think we're-?" Cheng2 tries not to laugh. Him and Jiang? "No."

"No?"

"Noooo." Cheng2 shakes his head. Carruthers still looks doubtful. Exhaustion washes over Cheng2. "Definitely not. Uh, I think I'm good to get to the nurse's office by myself if you want to-"

Carruthers takes a minute to get the hint. "Oh, yeah. I hope you guys work it out, whatever 'it' is." He makes finger quotation marks as he walks away. Another time, Cheng2 might try to puzzle him out.

For now, he heads to the nurse's office.

 

* * *

 

"-towards your fellow students. Jiang, are you listening?"

Jiang's eyes sweep from Cheng2's retreating back to Milo's watery eyes. 

"Yes," he says.


	7. Chapter 7

"Cheng2 got in a fight with a certain someone," Koh says quietly as he enters the dining hall line.

"And?" SickSteve asks. He picks up a plum, inspects it, and grabs a nectarine instead. "He needs to stop letting his mouth get away from him."

"I need to know whether I should be getting involved."

"That all depends," SickSteve answers with a lift of his eyebrows and a bite of his nectarine, "on which certain someone it was."

Koh's steady gaze gives him the answer.

"No" is SickSteve's verdict. "With that one, Cheng2 deserved whatever he got."


	8. Chapter 8

Henry Cheng has long been a man of planning. He sets out his life ahead of time, spreads it out so it touches every surface of his room, one vast galaxy of what will be. To an extent, e's fluid in his possibilities but, in general, he clings to the future, to what is to come. One day, he will brush up against something more and it will accept him into its midst. One day, too, he will have a life he enjoys.

Life doesn't always follow his master plan. If it did, he would have come across something more long ago and befriended it.

Jiang, for example, was never part of the plan.

Henry sighs as he unpins a reminder from his cork board and puts another in its place.

A breakup will not break him. This has happened before. This feeling will go away. It has to.

For now, everything is routine. He goes to Rutherford's scrimmages and Koh's games. He reigns over his followers like the beneficent ruler he is. He redirects Cheng2 to be a little less brash and boisterous.

Err, well, he used to.

There is something peculiar about Cheng2 as of late. The brashness isn't changed; he's as blunt as ever. It must be the boisterousness. That is down. He's...calm.

It is strange bordering on unpleasant. Cheng2 seems absent too often, distracted. By what? No one knows.

Henry pins another reminder to the board. He looks at it- a petition for a campus radio show- and sighs. He turns his back to the corkboard and leans against the wall, rubbing his forehead with his hands, careful not to muss his hair. He doesn’t, in all honesty, care about such plebeian matters. Ryang wants a half hour to spout his various views. SickSteve has an eclectic variety of music he wishes to play. There is considerable interest in the student body, if none on Henry’s part.

He's gained Gansey’s trust. It is the culmination of years of effort and seeming eons of desire. In the short time since Borden House, they have become friends. There is a rapport there, not quite _jeong_ , not yet but soon to be. More than that, there's magic in Gansey's circle, the kind that Henry always knew of without really, truly visualizing what could be. Gansey's magicians wield their magic altogether differently from others Henry has known. They are earthier, simpler, and infinitely more complex.

If Henry is being truthful, he is not entirely certain these magicians deserve their status but hasn't that been the case for all magicians, dreamers especially?

So he has gained Gansey's trust and he has become absorbed into the prince's world. Still a stranger yet not too strange to be disallowed. It is thrilling, intoxicating.

At the same time, he has lost Jiang’s companionship.

The two should even out. They have failed to.

 

* * *

 

“You're not s’posed to be here,” Jiang mumbles. He is lying on his bed, chip bag at his side, in a room labeled Effervescence. Henry tries to pretend he doesn't know who shares this room with him. He fails, as he always does, just as he fails to forget that Jiang is not his and his alone.

This is a memory and so Henry knows the words that will come next:

“I'm in a bit of a contrary mood this evening.”

“Afternoon.”

Closing the door behind him, Henry smiles gently at the correction. He will be forever grateful for whichever mysterious thing brought Jiang back to him. That is what Henry thinks then, what preys on his heart now.

"What are you watching?" past Henry asks, nodding to the laptop balanced on Jiang's stomach.

Jiang moves over, an open invitation to join him.

"Ink Master?"

“Mmm.”

This is his favorite Jiang: relaxed and content to do nothing, not because he is exhausted or sick, simply because idleness is a thing that can be experienced. Henry settles next to him, not quite touching, not quite not, electrified by the very space between them.

Jiang extracts a chip from his bag and offered it to Henry with fingers that smell of weed and sour cream. When Henry declines, Jiang shrugs and pops it into his mouth. Henry runs the back of his finger down Jiang's arm. It is good to see Jiang eating.

“Where did your roommate venture off to?” Henry asks, looking around.

Jiang shrugs. Henry takes that as he'd prefer to remain nonverbal today. Henry doesn't mind. It has always seemed more honest, more intimate like this. If Henry isn't good with words, Jiang is too good with them. His body is less willing to lie.

He nips at Jiang's arm, just light, little bites that make Jiang roll his eyes and snort. He's amused by Henry's actions, though not particularly keen on joining in. That's alright.

Henry licks a spot on Jiang's shoulder and blows on it, startling a laugh out of the other boy. Jiang shrugs, this time to dislodge Henry. The sweep of his eyes down the length of Henry's body tells Henry that isn't a rejection. He resumes his ministrations, soft bites and gentle caresses, one hand roaming over Jiang's hip and skinny side, the other holding up his own weight.

He purloins a solitary, artificial cheese-flavored kiss before Jiang pulls away, shaking his head. One kiss, it's the rule.

Jiang shifts. He glances downwards with insistence. Henry's puzzled. Jiang sighs, shifts again. His eyes trail over his own form, pausing at the space between his thighs. This time Henry doesn't miss the damp spot on his boxers or the trace of that heady scent.

His right hand coming down to rub over his sweetest spot, Jiang watches him through slitted eyes.

Henry wets his lips.

You would not think, looking at Henry- that is, according to what other people say of Henry's looks- that he has experience in this sort of thing. He does, of that you can be certain.

He didn't know, when they first met, that this was what he wanted. All he knew was that Jiang fascinated him, that his mind, ambition, and smoke-roughened voice were necessary for Henry's continued existence.

In its own course, the revelation came. By then, Jiang had changed parties and Henry had had time to see how other boys- and girls and women and men- crossed his gaze, which ones found favor and which ones didn't.

Despite this, Henry didn't forget Jiang nor did Jiang forget him. Against the approval of Henry's men, they crossed paths again and again until, finally, Jiang said he wanted more.

Now, Henry has the feel of Jiang's anatomy memorized. He doesn't need to look to know if he slides his hand down Jiang's front just right, slip between the hair, he'll make Jiang gasp like _oh_. If he strokes his clit just right, he can get Jiang off in minutes. If Jiang's in the mood, he might even get to trace his finger over that tight ring of muscle in his ass and slip one inside. There is only one place Henry is not allowed to touch and he is perfectly okay with that. If this was solely about what he wanted, he would not be here.

Henry trails his hand down Jiang's side, over his hip, intent on his quest. He tugs at Jiang's boxers. Jiang doesn't resist, just lets him do it, humming and leaning back against the pillows, legs spreading of their own accord.

He is too much, really, he is.

Henry, awed by Jiang's presence, the gorgeous display before him of Jiang wet and wanting, takes too long. Jiang huffs. Ever agile, he slings a leg around Henry's neck. Henry buries his face in Jiang's heat. He’s surrounded by that thick scent, the heat pulsing as Jiang's breath quickens.

It's so mesmerizing, that entrancing heat, those swollen folds, that engorged clitoris. If Jiang would allow it, Henry would tell him of his exquisiteness every day. He would tell him how he's often laid awake at night, puzzling over what went wrong, why Jiang went away, whether this time he's here for good or whether tomorrow Henry won't be allowed even a conversation.

Henry doesn't want words now, not that Jiang seems up to any.

He buries his face between Jiang's folds just to breathe in that heady scent, then licks a stripe from entrance to clit. Jiang shudders. This is the closest Henry will ever be to having him at his mercy.

He sucks gently at Jiang's clit. Jiang arches into the touch. He doesn't favor prolonged attention there, so Henry doesn't stay long.

He moves down farther, dragging the tip of his nose along Jiang's folds. He spreads Jiang open and relishes the sight of deep pink edged in brown. The scent is thick here and intoxicating. He runs his tongue under Jiang's clit down to what Jiang prefers to call his cunt and what Henry prefers to call anything else. Barely a second and he's moving down over smooth perineum to Jiang's hole. 

The smell is muskier here but no less pleasant. Henry circles it with his tongue, his hands holding onto the back of Jiang's thighs, forefingers brushing against the bottom of Jiang's wondrous backside.

Another thing you would not guess looking at Henry Cheng- he has nothing at all against eating ass.

He teases Jiang, pressing the flat of his tongue against his hole, circling around it, making the smallest probes. He pulls back, nipping at the skin between Jiang's cheeks. The angle is awkward but he even makes it down (or up? Henry's a little unsure about directions here) to the space in between his cleft. Running his tongue along that always draws out the breathiest moans. He relishes the sound for several minutes.

Jiang, impatient, pulls Henry back up to where he wants him. Henry gets back to work. He dips his tongue inside Jiang's hole. He stretches as far as he can and decides it’s not enough. He slicks two fingers and taps them against Jiang's thigh, testing his mood. Jiang grunts. Taking this bit of eloquence as a yes, Henry presses his fingers inside. They slip in easily. He scissors them, stretching Jiang wide.

Jiang makes a choked sound. His hips buck. His walls, slick with Henry's spit, clench tightly around Henry's tongue and fingers. Henry keeps at it, taking every sound as encouragement. Jiang's moans are getting shorter and higher, less symphonic as he draws closer.

Henry squeezes Jiang's thigh. This earns him a sharp "ha!" that's quickly swallowed by more moans. Henry works his tongue deeper, massages his fingers harder. Jiang's thighs are quivering, he's so close.

It's everything to remember to breathe, to keep his fingers from cramping. Just a little more, just a littl-

Jiang comes with a gasp so quiet Henry barely hears it. His legs fall open and he slithers off Henry's shoulders. For the moment, he's bonelessly in rapture, come slicking his inner thighs.

And that is where the memory ends, Jiang sated and Henry wanting, feeling, loving, even. Henry could go further, if he wanted to remember what it was like for Jiang to ignore him outside the bedroom and stolen moments, the pain and hurt of knowing that they were a secret for reputations' plural purpose, reputations that didn't seem so important now.

Weren't they? Why else had Jiang cut him off again? He had wanted to pay his respects. He had known the other boy, if not liked him. Prokopenko was the lackey of Kavinsky and Kavinsky was the one who took Jiang from him.

He was allowed to mourn the followers of others. Henry balls his hand into a fist and presses it against the wall behind him. He was.

He only wishes the cost of doing so hadn't been so high.


	9. Chapter 9

Jiang doesn't think the costs are that high. Sacrifices have to be made when it's the world you're protecting. Not that Jiang thinks he's doing anything so noble. This needs to be done and he's doing it, simple as that.

(Never mind that saving a select few now might, in some way, absolve him from the guilt of not saving others before, of standing by, even encouraging their destruction knowing full well how prone they were to doing it anyway.)

(The past does not sit easy with Jiang. It never has.)

Lately, it's been getting harder. The ghost has been pushing its boundaries. Jiang's run out of things to do, things to say. This was never his thing, hanging out in a subterranean room with one person, amusing himself and others with what can be found around them. Things don't happen in these kinds of rooms. This is where you start a good evening or end a boring one. So he understands Kavinsky's restlessness. He feels it, too.

They're past pretending Jiang comes to amuse himself. Kavinsky knows he's being monitored. He was never stupid, might even have been the smartest of them if you took creativity, ingenuity, and sheer craft into play.

This isn't clever. This is basic. Jiang will start to doze off as he often does lately and Kavinsky will move towards the stairs, stopping when Jiang snaps awake.

"Relax," K will say with an insincere leer. "I'm not going anywhere."

This happens more often than it should. Jiang's presence must lend some credibility to K's form because he waits until Jiang's here to get out. Jiang's come to believe K needs him to do so. There's not enough power in this house or enough residual anger or despair to keep Kavinsky together. He needs Jiang to exist and he needs Jiang to escape.

They'll still pretend they don't know what the other is doing. It's what they've always done, whether Kavinsky remembers that or not.

He's forgotten things, this ghost of Kavinsky. He's still clever, just not as much as he was. Events are distorted, memories confused. He thinks he's known Jiang longer than he has and Proko less. Jiang never corrects him.

Ghosts decay. Jiang doesn't know much about American ghosts, just what he's seen in movies, but all ghosts have similarities. A ghost is a reflection of what was and what will never be again. It is dead and dead things do not grow or change or become anything more than less of what they were. The other thing Jiang knows about ghosts? The longer they remain, the more focused they become on their goals.

Someday soon, Jiang's presence won't be enough of a deterrent. Kavinsky will go and it won't be video games he plays with the inhabitants of Henrietta.

What will it be? What is Kavinsky planning? Jiang still hasn't found the answer to that question. His mind is cottony of late, his tongue reluctant, and the question always seems to slip away before he can ask it.

 

* * *

 

Jiang already knows what's waiting for him as he comes out of Calculus. Cheng's been staring at him for the last fifteen minutes, the kind of staring that means he wants to talk. Jiang can walk fast but it'll take a miracle for him to escape Cheng's indomitable will today.

He can still put space between them. Jiang tightens his hold on his messenger bag and powers his way down the hall, glaring at anyone in his path. Students scatter. After what happened with Cheng2 the other day, no one's particularly keen on pissing Jiang off today.

He can hear the footsteps behind him, practically feel Cheng's eyes as he politely makes his way through the crowd.

There is a faint possibility Jiang could escape all this. He slams his feet into the floor, putting power in every step. He's almost to the main entrance-

"Jiang!"

And there it is. 

Jiang ducks underneath a stairwell. Cheng follows because of course he does. Pressing his lips together in a grimace- his head is killing him- Jiang turns around.

"What do you want, Cheng?" Jiang scans what part of the entranceway he can see from here. A few students goggle but they quickly move along when they see Jiang's glowering face. They're not who Jiang's looking for anyway.

Jiang didn't see the court but one of them must be nearby. They don't leave Cheng alone for long these days. Cheng's over them, Jiang can tell, but they aren't going to let him go so fast.

The thing about Cheng is he's as earnest and as fake as everyone thinks he is. People tend to think one or the other, rarely both. Cheng either appeals to you or he doesn't. The court is kept close so long as there's no one better. It's shitty. It's the way it is with true raven boys.

The only question is how long it'll take before Cheng's men push back.

Cheng's not answered yet, electing to spend his time looking at Jiang's face and other parts. Jiang's mood becomes, if possible, even less agreeable.

He snaps his fingers in Cheng's face, a silent my eyes are up here. "I asked what the fuck you wanted, Cheng."

Cheng blinks, obviously unused to such disrespect. It's been awhile, after all. He recovers himself quickly.

"Are you alright?" he asks.

 

* * *

 

“No,” Jiang grouses, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "I'm fine, Cheng."

Both answers have truth. Jiang's fine is most people's terrible. He does a decent job of hiding it behind the drugs but the red nose and the breathlessness are just more signs. Jiang is not okay. It's doubtful he'll ever be.

Henry wants to touch him so badly.

"Talk to me, Jiang," he says instead.

Jiang glares. He's so insistent on looking strong, from the buzzed hair to the steel-toed boots, that Henry's always slightly afraid he won't remember how when he begins to soften.

Jiang sighs a long, steady breath. He runs a hand over what little hair he has. Henry wishes it were his own in its place. "Things aren't good," Jiang says with a shrug and an unstable mouth. "People look at me even more than they used to. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up and it's just going to be a bad dream." Jiang's hand slides to cover his mouth, then falls to his side. He shrugs again, the corners of his mouth curved painfully downwards. "It fucks you up."

"How?" Henry asks.

Jiang's gaze sweeps over him from crisp peaks to Sperrys. It settles an inch from Henry's right ear. "I keep thinking you're a dream, too."

It's an opening. Henry can work with that. 

“Hopefully not a bad one," he replies.

“We'll see.”

"Is this why you've been avoiding me, because you think I might be a dream?" It would sound preposterous if there weren't things they've never talked about, things like Henry's mother and Kavinsky's prowess, things like RoboBee's origins and Prokopenko's, too.

Jiang scoffs. "You've been hanging around Gansey," he says, beginning to dissemble. He has never been truthful, Jiang. It's why they never talked much. "I'd rather not associate with his ilk."

Henry is his ilk now but he can't say that, not least because the words won't cooperate with him in a way that will make Jiang stay and not run.

"It sounds as if you're jealous."

"Shouldn't I be?"

Henry doesn't answer. The answer is no. The answer is yes.

"Henry Cheng, Casanova," Jiang muses. "I hear Gansey has himself a girlfriend now. Have you met her?"

Henry doesn't have Jiang's way with words but he knows that tone. When Jiang sounds like he couldn't care, it means he does, very much.

"I have. The boys like her." He means his followers.

"Do you?"

"We get along." They have very much in common, Blue Sargent and Henry Cheng. Children of highly perceptive mothers, born into families where magic and fables were less idle chatter than business. He might be going to Venezuela with her. He might never see her again when this school year ends. She is an addition to his story, whereas Gansey is a divergence from a path carved shortly after his birth.

She is nothing like Jiang, yet something of his fierceness is echoed in her, a desperate need to be more than what the world wants her to be. The world told them here is your box and they punched and kicked their way out of it.

"If I wanted to be with them right now," Henry says, "I would be."

Jiang's lip curls in minor disgust. Henry's said something rather gauche again. He sighs internally. He needs to redirect this conversation.

 

* * *

 

Jiang wants to drag his teeth down Cheng's neck. He wants to bite a bruise into the meat of his shoulder, leave marks on his hips and knees. He does not want to be standing here talking. Their communication has always been best when it's light on words.

"I was told you got in a fight with Cheng2."

Jiang blows air out the side of his mouth. There's the earnestness. Jiang would have thought Cheng would be smart enough not to mention that or anything involving Broadway (Jiang will never, ever think of him as Cheng2, as having any right to that designation other than a similarity of names). Then again, Cheng does have his blindnesses. "It was warranted. He was being a shithead."

"I apologize for him."

Jiang's face twists. "Yeah, I'm done here." He shoves past Cheng.

"Jiang, wait-" Henry grabs his arm. 

Jiang stares at it for a second- the contact burns through him, more than he's had for weeks, made only stronger by it being Cheng- before ripping his arm back.

"Don't you get it, Cheng?" he snarls. "We're over. You don't have a monopoly on my time."

"Is that what you want?"

Searing heat lances Jiang's chest, scalds his heart. He can't look in Cheng's eyes right now. If he does, he'll see the earnestness there and the hurt behind it. He was mad at Cheng for intruding before. He's not know but he needs to sort this Kavinsky business out before that thing gets loose.

"Yeah," Jiang says. "It is."

 

* * *

 

"Jiang," SickSteve says from where he's leaned against the sun-warmed brick of the building, rolling an apple between his hands, "might I interest you in a bit of our local fauna?" He proffers the apple to Jiang, who regards it with distaste.

"Can't you people leave me alone?" Jiang grouses, though he slows to hear what the other boy has to say. SickSteve's tolerable. He's the least loyal of Cheng's men, which means whoever's behalf he's here on, it's not Cheng's.

SickSteve pushes off the wall to follow Jiang. "You're too much fun."

Jiang scowls.

"See, look at that smile." SickSteve grins, tucking the apple away in his bag. His actions are a little slow, unusually careful. Jiang glances at his eyes, which are more hooded than normal. SickSteve's on enough legitimate scrips to bring down a Clydesdale. From what Jiang hears, he's on a few more of the less legitimate kind. He's certainly never been averse to buying pills off Jiang.

"So I hear your man's friends with Gansey now. Sorry, ex-man."

Why SickSteve thinks Jiang's going to fall for his game, Jiang's not sure. The Vancouver crowd forgets Jiang knows them, that he was one of them. They like to think Mrs. Woo kicking him out was a sharp, clean break, Jiang showing his true colors, when instead he had been drifting towards Kavinsky for months.

Jiang was who he had always been. He was not meant for their world. He hadn't mourned the loss.

(Mostly.)

(Cutting out Cheng had hurt beyond reason. But he had known their paths weren't meant to cross for long and, if Jiang were to excel, he couldn't have Cheng's type of distraction. And so he threw in his lot with someone who turned out to be more than they seemed and he became distracted and attached and, in the middle and the end, he lost people who didn't need to be lost.)

Other than Koh, Jiang knew the Vancouver crowd. Smart, driven, hungry. They stewed in the unfairness of their situation, working that much harder than everyone else only to have their achievements dismissed for the same reason they worked so damn hard in the first place.

Jiang didn't grow up in North America. He didn't have the same insecurities, the same weaknesses. What consumed him didn't consume them and vice versa. It was better he didn't stay with them, better to let more flagrant faults take center stage. You couldn't hurt someone if you never let them know what harmed you.

In their time apart, Jiang's come to see them as what they really are: uppity bastards.

Still, SickSteve had sought him out knowing Jiang isn't in the pill business anymore.

"I don't like it. Truthfully, I'm not all that keen on having the Gansey-Lynch-Parrish trifecta meddling in my affairs."

"Which are?" Jiang asks.

"Not dying. Or getting my face punched in. Simple things like that."

He's noticed, then, what comes with Lynch territory. Jiang's about to ask SickSteve what he suspects when he spies a dark figure crossing the green, eyes fixed on the ground, heading for his car. It's Swan or what's left of him. Jiang should text Skov before he does something stupid. Better, he should go after him himself.

He decides against it. Let Skov sort Swan out. Jiang certainly isn't going to have any sway over their newly turned wallflower.

He should be getting back to his next class anyway. 

Jiang looks up at SickSteve's face. "Like you said, he's my ex. I'm not responsible for what he does."

"Who knows," he mutters as he's walking away, "with any luck, Cheng will get bored of him by next week."

 

* * *

 

Cheng does not get bored of Gansey. 

They grow closer by the day. Cheng's followers track the budding alliance with apprehension, some more so than others. Cheng has a habit of throwing himself into new hobbies; perhaps his white prince will be another.

As the weeks spread into a month, then another, they come to see that their hypothesis might not hold. It is not a feeling they like. They are held together, tentatively, by a charismatic leader or, possibly, the pretext of one. They accepted Cheng's faults. All they ask is loyalty in return.

It would not be so painful if they had confirmation Cheng meant to leave them. To become a follower on his own would be distasteful but acceptable, given notice. Instead, there is only growing discord and simmering anger. Just because these boys are quiet in the classroom doesn't mean they don't harbor strong emotions.

Ryang wants to strangle Cheng. He's held back by Rutherford; goaded on by SickSteve.

Lee-Squared wants peace. Koh says there's no reason Henry can't be drawn back.

As for Cheng2, he's in no state of mind to have an opinion.

 

* * *

 

Jiang is only dimly aware of the growing discontent. SickSteve keeps him informed with the occasional missive, sounding more like he needs someone to talk to than that he expects Jiang's assistance. Jiang has eyes. He can see Cheng gravitating towards another crowd.

He's safe as long as Lynch doesn't like him and Lynch has never liked him. SickSteve's guess was close enough to count as hitting the target. Problems in this town stem from the Lynch family and two Lynches in particular. One's dead now. The other despises Cheng, for the normal reasons, no doubt.

Regardless, it isn't Jiang's problem. Unlike other things.

Jiang's come to a decision of sorts. A conclusion, really.

It isn't Kavinsky.

Jiang sucks nicotine into his lungs and studies the boy before him. Not-Kavinsky reclines in his movie seat, one leg hooked over the arm. Everything from his white tank top to his sunglasses to his immaculate shoes is right. His hair is right, his face, of course. Even the faded scars on his arms, cuts and burns and what-have-you, are right.

But he isn't.

Jiang's been thinking. No one goes to the drag strip anymore. It was a crime scene for a while, police tape cordoning off where K gave up or in or whatever.

Now the tape's been ground into the dirt and the illicitness of the place has faded to dust.

It's not so fun when things get real. It's not so thrilling when you realize how many lives one single second ruined.

Whoosh.

Someone caught it on camera, spread it around school. Old news by September.

What was Jiang doing at that moment? He remembers being behind the wheel of an impossible car, Swan, Skov, Proko, a handful of others in the identical Lancer Evos on either side of him. He might have been cleaning his nails. He might have fallen asleep.

How easily the thrill fades. How quickly horrible things are forgotten.

But some things don't change. You don't off yourself and come back. You don't fucking tear yourself apart a thousand times and suddenly become stagnant. K is gone and whatever the fuck is haunting Jiang best stop using his face because Jiang will find a way to fuck its shit up.

That doesn't mean, though, that Jiang wouldn't want to be wrong.

He does.

Jiang wants, more fiercely than ever before, for it to be Kavinsky sitting in front of him. In these weeks Jiang's been guarding this house, he's come to remember what it was like in the early days, before things went to shit. It shames Jiang even to think it but he misses Kavinsky. He misses his friend.

They had fought near-ceaselessly, yet they had been friends, hadn't they? Both searching for more, both barely in control of their lives or emotions or selves.

Kavinsky had helped Jiang when others would not, more than once. He had been a shitshow of a person but he had done things without being asked, things other people couldn't be counted on to do. Jiang had wondered, often, what he gave K in return. He was certainly not a good dog, nor a true rival for Prokopenko's affections. He wasn't the best racer. His attendance at parties was spotty.

More than once, he had thought K liked the challenge. More than once, he had thought he was nothing more than a symbolic victory against Cheng (and perhaps that was why Jiang fought so fiercely to be his own man and to bring Declan Lynch into his bed. He could have been in control, he thought. He could have had Proko and he could do things better than Kavinsky could, without ever thinking that nobody wanted better, just someone who could show them a good time).

Jiang takes a drag of his cigarette.

"Fuck off," he tells the ghost, certain now that it's not who it says it is. Joseph Kavinsky would never let himself be stuck in this nightmare world, certainly not post-mortem. "You're not wanted here."

A lazy smile spreads across the thing's mouth. It looks ghoulish in a way the real Kavinsky only barely did

"Who are you really?" Jiang asks. Surely, some poor, dead Aglionby student looking to capitalize on a legend.

Not-Kavinsky ignores the question.

"Fuck it," Jiang says, sitting up. He stubs his cigarette out in a half-filled ashtray and stares into Not-Kavinsky's eyes. Just yesterday, Jiang dipped out on Skov because he had to rush back here. That sense of urgency is gone. Now, Jiang can see some indefinable quality was missing, something that told him with certainty this was not the god he had disdained.

Jiang snorts.

"You're nothing," he says. "Just a pathetic wannabe."

Not-Kavinsky says nothing, just stays where he is and runs a hand over his lips, smirking. 

It is with relief and a peculiar sorrow that Jiang leaves the Kavinsky mansion.


	10. Chapter 10

Professor Milo is droning on about Tennyson when Cheng2 turns to the boy who sits in the next seat over, and says, "I don't care. Everyone thinks I do, but I _don't care_."

The boy, once a vibrant part of the classroom, now a quiet non-participant, is a fine-boned, honey-eyed Southerner by the name of Lafayette Swan. This is the first time Cheng2's ever spoken to him inside a classroom.

As the most reticent of Kavinsky's ex-group, Swan's not at all the person to blurt things out to. But Cheng2's sometimes just a medium for words and these words want out. Swan just happened to be within firing range.

What doesn't Cheng2 care about? Everything. Anything. School, his parents' expectations, graduating. Kavinsky dying in a fireworks disaster no one believed was an accident.

People keep thinking Cheng2's happy about that, like he's harboring some sadistic, schadenfreudish desire to see assholes burn in front of a hundred spectators. When he doesn't give the right response, just stares blankly at them, people lean on things they know nothing about. Kavinsky hurt him, didn't he, they say, a few years ago. Put him in the hospital and didn't even foot the bill.

They expect Cheng2 to take pleasure in someone dying. He can't even take pleasure in his favorite cereal anymore.

There's only one thing he cares about and that thing doesn't seem to care about him anymore.

He hasn't seen Proko since Monday. It's mid-November, the days short and the nights bitter and long. Cheng2 has to consider that the last time might have been it.

It's a painful thought.

Rutherford's worried, Cheng2 can tell, not about Proko, about whom he knows nothing, but Cheng2.

"You're distracted, my friend," he said just this morning. They were in the bathroom, Rutherford helping tackle his hair. Gel alone wasn't enough, it needed a blowout and a firm hand, and Cheng2 hadn't been keeping up with it to Rutherford's satisfaction. "Is it be something I can help you with?"

Cheng2 had looked at Rutherford's reflection in the mirror and said, "No".

Rutherford could not bring Proko's ghost back to him. He could only sculpt Cheng2's eyebrows and texture his hair and make him presentable as if presentation mattered at all.

So he tells Lafayette Swan he doesn't care, blurts it right out in the midst of a lecture on "The Charge of the Light Brigade", and waits for a response.

Swan's unreadable eyes watch him.  _Alright_ , Cheng2 expects him to say.  _Okay_.

No words pass Swan's plush lips.

 

* * *

 

Swan passes Cheng2's desk some days later. Holding a closed fist over the laminated wood, he opens it, letting a gold chain slither out and pile on the desk. He opens his hand fully and a statement ring, gold with onyx and diamond inlay, drops solidly on top of it.

"What's this?" Cheng2 asks as if he doesn't recognize them.

Swan's pretty eyes bore into Cheng2's. "You gave them to him," he says in words rendered poetry by his accent. "It's only right you have them back."

Cheng2 doesn't ask whether Proko ever wore them.

But he wants to.

He pockets the items.

 

* * *

 

Cheng2 tilts his head back to look up at the pinpricks of light in the winter sky. It's cool tonight, not cold enough to see his breath. The air feels good in his lungs, the smell of asphalt and car tires cleansing after the thick, Italian herb-scented air inside, the rustling wind soothing after the pounding throb of Bloodhound Gang.

The boys made him come. Cheng2 didn't want to go out, certainly not to Nino's, but Lee-Squared wanted pizza and Nino’s didn’t deliver. Koh and SickSteve backed him up and Rutherford hadn't considered Cheng2's no an acceptable answer.

Obviously, dragging him along unwillingly hadn't made Cheng2 good dinner company. He'd upset Lee-Squared. Nothing big, just a comment with more truculence than Koh felt like tolerating. Cheng2 had excused himself before someone else could do it for him.

He likes it better out here, anyway. Less people to tell him how antisocial he's becoming. He assumes Rutherford will come after him soon or Lee-Squared. They’ll approach the situation entirely differently and yet they’ll be saying the same thing: _why can’t you pretend like you’re enjoying this?_

Cheng2 fingers the objects in his left pocket. He should put them somewhere safe. Soon. Right now, he just wants to touch them, to know that they were kept, after all this time. Now that the ghost’s not here to remind him, he needs-

Cheng2 stops that thought. Someone's watching him.

His chest flaring with hope, Cheng2 spins around. His eyes scan the parking lot in hopes of finding an otherworldly being.

Black & Mild to his lips, Swan studies Cheng2 from where he’s perched atop the hood of a sleek RX-7. He cuts a small figure in the near empty parking lot, cigarillo smoke his only company. Disappointment settles over Cheng2 like the heaviest of wool blankets. His eyes were what Cheng2 felt, not the ghost's.

He raises a hand out of politeness. Swan turns his head to the side. 

Cheng2 doesn't take it personally. He and Swan have never had what you might call a "close" relationship. Even when Cheng2 was hanging out at the fringes of Kavinsky society, attending substance parties, joining in on the occasional dodge chicken, they hadn't talked.

Still, Swan wasn't there that day, when Kavinsky and his disciples took fists to Cheng2's person. He didn't kick at Cheng2's ribs or spit in his face. He didn't issue a bitter warning in a Slavic tongue Cheng2 had no hope of understanding, laugh, and repeat it in English.

Swan wasn't there. He could have been. Although he might be unlikely to dirty his own hands, he wasn't above watching Skov rip apart anyone whose hands wandered where Swan didn't want them.

Swan wasn't there.

But Jiang was.

Jiang watched. He sat in that junkyard on a gutted Honda and took everything in with emotionless eyes. His lighter flicked on and off with a roll of his thumb, the flame a focal point for Cheng2 as he lay bleeding, an acknowledgement that any help would be a long time coming.

The message was clear: this was what you got when you played too rough with one of Kavinsky's toys.

Cheng2 turns Proko's ring over in his pocket. He chews on the inside of his lip. He wonders whether Swan knows the rest of the story. He must not. He wouldn't have given Cheng2 the ring or the chain back if he did.

 

* * *

 

"Proko," Cheng2 had gasped where he lay sprawled in the packed dirt of that junkyard ground, pressure on his lungs though there was nothing holding them down. He was going to ask the boy standing over him why, whether the retribution was really equal to the crime, if he could muster the breath through broken ribs. “Pro…” he wheezed. “…ko.”

Something like regret passed over Prokopenko's plain face. "Forget my name, Cheng2. It would be better for you if you did."

"Proko," Kavinsky said. He stood several feet away. The fun was over; he was ready to move on. Skov stood next to him, hands resting on the baseball bat slung across his shoulders, and Jiang, too, his steel-toed boots less spattered with blood than Cheng2 would have expected. They were a motley assortment with expressions ranging from amusement on Kavinsky’s to boredom on Skov’s to rage on Jiang’s. There was no concern for the boy they were leaving in the dirt with a broken arm and a collapsing lung.

After a moment, a long moment where Proko watched Cheng2 with an unreadable expression, Proko heeded his master’s call. He joined the others. Kavinsky placed a raw-knuckled hand on Proko's shoulder and shoved him ahead of him. There was laughter. Then they were gone.

The sun began to set, the afternoon air growing less muggy as night rolled in. As the minutes slowly trickled into hours, Cheng2 became more certain this was it. No one was coming. He was alone. He was going to die alone.

Eventually, the ambulance came. No one knew who had called it in but one of Kavinsky’s men must have because there were flashing lights and no one else passed Cheng2 as he lay struggling to breathe. One of them called and Cheng2 lived and less than a handful of people living know what really happened two years ago.


	11. Chapter 11

Skov rings the doorbell to the old Victorian a second time. He heard scuffling in the house a few seconds ago. Someone's here; they're just taking their time answering the door. Probably, whoever's inside recognizes him.

There's still no answer. Skov rings a third time. When that doesn't achieve his goal, he begins to rap insistently against the door. This doesn't irritate him. He has all day. The people inside can't ignore him forever.

Six months ago, this kind of persistence would be uncharacteristic of him. What can he say? He cares.

He can hear the laughter in his head. Skov caring? Blake Skovron, as a rule, does not  _care_. He likes, he takes interest. He fucks things he's interested in, up or over or in. This shit, this is new.

And why shouldn't it be? Skov was late to the party, Lafayette Swan's latest toy, only this toy never got discarded. He meshed and he melded and in the end he was left largely unscarred by the events of July Fourth.

He was a dog more loyal to his bitch than his master, more rocked to the core by his amor's dying light than the actual deaths of one, then two of his so-called friends.

But he's had time since then. He's seen how little people care, how taboo Kavinsky's name has become, how the school board showed Prokopenko as much care as they did the student that Latin teacher killed. A memorial service, a few teary words.

None of the people in the audience had liked Proko. They hadn't cared about him. It was a joke, wasn't it, how pathetic he was following K around all the time. They didn't know how far that devotion went, that he'd gotten shot and it wasn't quite him who got up the next day and walked away.

Skov barely remembered it. He'd chased a Vegas cocktail with Whaler's that night; started out comfortably blurry and ended less comfortably numb. Mostly, he remembered Swan's fear and a man who looked too much like K and breaking tree roots with a shovel. And, just like that, it was over. Proko was back. Skov hadn't wanted to deal with the aftermath so he mixed dream pills with dream liquid, what Swan called sunshine in a cup, until he couldn't recall which body they'd buried and which they'd burned.

That first week, everything was so hazy. Everyone was so concerned about Proko, how he'd hash out. Skov was still preoccupied with getting rid of the feel of graveyard dirt under his nails. There were differences to the forgery, but what they were, Skov hardly knew. He wasn't a good friend then. He was in it for the sex and the booze and the drugs that were more dream than designer. The cars were incidental, the acquaintances, too. They were Swan's friends, K's pack.

They're all gone now, Morris and Dvorak, Swatts and Walker, and too many others whose names Skov never bothered to learn. They chose to leave. Skov won't pursue. He doesn't care about  _them_.

Jiang, though? That's a different story.

And so Blake Skovron finds himself on the forbidding porch of Litchfield House.

 

* * *

 

"You are not welcome here," the diminutive old woman announces when she finally decides to answer the door. She crosses her arms over her chest and glowers up at him.

"You wound me, granny," Skov says, dramatically placing one hand over his heart. The other he places on the door, holding it open. He gives her his signature roguish smile. "Is Henry Cheng home?"

The Fisker's in the driveway but that isn't an indication of anything. Cheng isn't known for his driving.

Mrs. Woo holds fast. "I will call the police."

Those words don't scare Skov. What’s getting escorted off some lady’s porch? He's lost too much.

He refuses to lose more. Even if it means groveling at Henry Cheng's feet. He's been called a dog before; might as well act like one.

(Don't ask Skov what his real reasons are for doing this. You won't like his answers.)

(Obligation.)

(To make up for the indifference of the past.)

(To make up for the bodies of the dead.)

"And will they answer?" Skov smirks at Litchfield's caretaker. "Come on, ma'am. I just need a quick word." He spies a boy passing through the hallway. "Ryang, my man! Vouch for me. Tell the warden to release Cheng for a spell."

Plainly surprised to be addressed, Ryang hesitates. He glances at his landlady.

"If my aunt doesn't want you coming in, I can't let you."

Ah, aunt. Shit. Skov scratches the side of his head. "Is this about Cheng Dos? Because I can honestly say I had nothing to do with that." That's not entirely true. True-ish, maybe. That's enough, isn't it? It was K and Proko who roughed the guy up. Skov just stood guard. He may have put a baseball bat against his ribs a couple times but the guy had it coming.

He smiles placatingly. "Look, Ryang, Ryang’s aunt. I’m not trying to cause any trouble. I just need to talk to Cheng about Jiang. Tell Cheng that. He'll come down."

"Jiang?" Ryang echoes.

"Yeah?" Oh, man. Does Ryang not know? That’s some obliviousness right there. "Things have been a little rough for him lately, you know?" Aunt's and nephew's eyes say they don't. "He's not feeling _well_ ," Skov says, stressing the second-to-last word. Cheng'll know what that means. Skov's not discussing Jiang's medical shit (myriad medical maladies, he'd once told Proko and they'd laughed and laughed) with these two. “Look, just let me talk to Cheng.”

“No,” Mrs. Woo says.

Skov grits his teeth. They don’t believe him or, worse, they don’t care. Skov isn't here as a joke. He's not trying to harass a little, old Asian lady. Jiang's sickness has come back. He's never had a strong immune system, now it seems he's always drawn and pale, always trying to be alone.

Skov never paid much attention but he'd be stupid not to know K made special pills just for Jiang. Not even Proko would touch those, which meant they weren't the fun sort.

Medicine. It isn't a far leap from psychotropics to analgesics. K had the ability to do incredible, impossible things. Five or so months later it isn’t a stretch to think Jiang might be running out.

Jiang is subsisting on cigarettes and whisky these days and Skov isn't what he needs. Cheng is. Fucking Henry Cheng, a guy Jiang never even dated, who's shadow wrapped in light and obnoxious as hell, might be. Jiang is better when he's with him. He's gotta be. This shit didn't start back up until they broke up.

Skov can't care for Jiang. Never mind Jiang won't let him, Skov doesn’t have the resources. It’s a struggle enough as it is to keep his own shit together.

Swan's fading. He won’t talk to anyone, barely eats, barely sleeps. Skov has to beg him to go out, to do something that isn’t look through old photos and reread old texts. He has a voicemail from Proko he won’t stop replaying and a video from a party, K too bright and too vibrant and on the verge of reckless, he won’t stop watching. He’s absorbed in the past and it’s all Skov can do to get him to remember that’s not all there is.

Swan was a bright, pretty thing once. Too good for their crowd, too full of life. Skov's been fighting to get that boy back. Every day, he fails a little bit more.

(He should be less hard on himself. Swan and Kavinsky always shared the same core, that glitch deep down under all the charisma and allure. They'd ignored it in K, blamed it on his other faults but Skov knows his type and his type has weaknesses).

Skov knows he won't win if he fights alone. Cheng has resources he doesn't. The Vancouver crowd may not like Jiang but he was one of them once. That has to stand for something. A foot in the door, an audience with Cheng that’s all he’s asking.

Skov won't lose Jiang, not like this. Cheng still wants Jiang, Swan says so. He'll fight for him.

Cheng has to.

He  _has_ to _._

"He should see a doctor," Ryang says dismissively, "if he's not feeling well."

"It isn't that kind of illness." Jiang doesn't see doctors, either because he can't afford them or because there are none willing to do things the way he wants. "Cheng would understand."

Skov waits. Ryang doesn't move. His aunt continues to scowl. Cheng won't be seeing Skov today.

“Five seconds to get off my porch,” says Mrs. Woo, “before I call the police.”

“I don’t care about the police!” Skov snaps. “Don’t you get it, lady? My friend’s sic-”

“Would you care about a tow truck?”

Skov clamps his teeth together so he won’t scream. He takes a breath. “Fine, fine, I’m going. Just-” He looks at Ryang. "Tell him. Please. He'll understand."

 

* * *

 

Because Ryang isn't cruel, he relays the message. Cheng is oddly neutral about it, which is a huge red flag. Cheng is an effluence of emotion at all times. This time he's not, accepting what Skov said and thanking Ryang for telling him. He doesn't say whether he's going to do anything about it or even if he can. He definitely doesn't say why Skov thinks he might be able to do anything for Jiang or why he'd even want to.

"Rutherford," Ryang says after their latest makeout session. He's straddling Rutherford's lap. The bedroom door is closed. It's the perfect time to get answers. "How much do you know about Jiang?"

Rutherford pauses. Ryang's suspicion is piqued.

Ryang supposes he should know  _some_  things about Jiang himself. Freshman year was ages ago, though, and he hasn't kept up since. The guy was stealing answer keys and selling them.  _Imo_  kicked him out. End of story. In Ryang's mind, at least, for the last three years. Rutherford is less discerning in his associations. Ryang doubts he finds time in his day to actually converse with Jiang but surely he knows somebody who has.

"Not much. Why?" Rutherford asks. His thumb rubs along the line of Ryang’s waist.

"One of his friends came here," Ryang says. Prompted by Rutherford’s hum of interest, he recounts Skov's visit, making sure Rutherford knows how deeply Ryang does not care for  _Blake Skovron_ , the brutish, partyboy thug. The guy even had the gall to bring up Cheng2, as if it would endear him to Ryang. Cheng2 refused to speak of what happened to him. He hadn't elaborated _why_ Kavinsky and his cronies beat him to an inch of his life, only confirmed that they had, leaving Ryang to sketch in the details.

Surely, Cheng2 had caught them at something criminal. Ryang's imagination was not the most expansive but that was logical, wasn't it? Kavinsky lived for the illicit, the illegal, the barely legal. And Cheng2 had been going to their parties then. SickSteve and Rutherford had been known to attend, Koh, too, but parties of any manner were Cheng2's scene. So he must have caught them with their hands in something illegal and tried to expose them. It was pure chance Cheng2 had survived.

"Ngh," Rutherford says, which is less word than sound. "He's constantly sick. I think he's got-" Rutherford makes a flapping hand gesture that could mean anything.

That Ryang remembers. Jiang was gross, sniffly-sneazy, achy, wheezy all the time. It wasn’t surprising. He didn’t take care of himself. Hard drugs weren't known for making people healthier. "Why would Cheng care?"

"Uh."

Ryang's eyes narrow. "Rutherford."

"They're friends," Rutherford says. He won't look Ryang in the eye. "Maybe."

" _Logan_ ," Ryang presses, grabbing Rutherford's chin and forcing him to look at him. Suspicion is turning into a glimmering, an inkling of things he doesn't want to think about. Cheng used to be so _weird_  around Jiang. Protective weird. He wasn't grossed out by Jiang's sniffling.

That's what this must be. Skov was trying to appeal to what was, a friendship so long gone he wouldn't be leaning on it if there were anyone else.

That was it. Nothing more.

Nothing-

"They're like us."

-more.

"No." Ryang doesn't believe that. He refuses. Cheng _wouldn't_. Not after what Jiang and his friends did to Cheng2.

"Yes."

" _No_."

Ryang slides off Rutherford's lap in shock. He stands up. He tries to find words for how repulsed he is. Cheng2 nearly _died_. He was in the hospital for days. It took a month and a half for his ribs to heal. The only reason he didn’t have to learn how to write all over again was because he was already ambidextrous. There wasn’t even any reason why. Kavinsky and his thugs just did it to do it. And Cheng wasn’t just talking to Jiang, he was sleeping with him? Here, in _Imo_ ’s house?

"Yep," Rutherford says, scraping his hair back from his face. "Why do you think Koh keeps sleeping on the couch? But don't tell Cheng I told you."

"Cheng told you not to tell me?" Oh, are you fucking kidding. That little-

 

* * *

 

"Are you serious? What the fuck! How the fuck could h-"

Ryang's voice fades to the background as he launches into another of his rants. Rutherford listens halfheartedly. Reason won't reach Ryang when he's like this. He’ll fizzle out soon enough and feel immensely better, and forget what it was he was ever angry about. He’s a sweet one that way.

Rutherford, on the other hand, has no opinion on Cheng's dalliances. Whether it's Jiang or Gansey, it's Cheng's business and his alone. That is how all relationships should be handled. Keep it quiet, don't hurt anyone against their will, and you can do what you want. The Golden Rule of Relationships, Rutherford would call it. No one questions anyone; no one looks too closely at what anyone else is doing. There are exceptions, naturally, but, for the most part, it's a global statement.

It is curious, though, that Skov would come here looking for Cheng and over Jiang, no less. As far as Rutherford knows, they aren't on speaking terms, mostly because Jiang is exceptionally good at excising people from his life. The reason is also curious.

There are things Rutherford has noticed. Rutherford's not the type to make fast or deep friendships but he is reluctant to lose the ones he has. Jiang was one once. It wasn't until many months after he left that Rutherford counted Jiang gone. Had he apologized, made obeisance to Mrs. Woo, Jiang could have returned to Litchfield. His crime was not so great there was no recourse. Jiang had no desire to do so. When he left, it was meant to be for good. It was Cheng who dragged him back in. Perhaps Jiang was toying with him when he caught feelings. Perhaps that was why Cheng2 did it. Whatever the reason was, Jiang's come and gone from Cheng's life several times and, like Koh, Rutherford has made it his business who deals with Cheng.

All of this comes down to one observation: recently, there's been something off about Jiang. Something altogether too similar to what's been happening to Cheng2.

Spaceyness. A tendency to stare at nothing like there’s something there. A personality shriveling and dying when Cheng’s not around, like a morning glory to the sun.

If that is the illness Skov was referring to, then Rutherford has more observations to make.


	12. Chapter 12

If Rutherford is watching, Henry doesn't notice. He is outside the realm of the Vancouver crew. They barely register in his mind. They matter, they are good people. It's just he has Gansey now.

And things have happened. Immense, terrible, terrifying things. Magical, mystical, dazzling things. Everything he has ever wished for, here and real.

Magic.

 _More_.

Henry, who has never mastered words, finds they have escaped him once again. RoboBee is a masterpiece. RoboBee falls far short of everything he has seen at Gansey's side.

How it all occurred, no one can quite explain. Henry must gather that on his own and it is this:

Gansey's previous death and resuscitation were not idle affairs. It was fate or a thing close and it came at a cost that Gansey was not to bear. Glendower was going to be coerced to pay it. He did not and so Noah, a boy Henry can't recall ever meeting, did. It was not fair. It was inevitable.

Those were the answers he had to find for himself. His mother and the Gray Man supplied the rest. Henry has not lost his distaste of the latter and he does not take pleasure in the knowledge that the hitman isn't the least bit rusty in his skills.

For once, Henry does not feel the consummate voyeur, a traveler whose presence has done little to shift the balance. He had been instrumental in getting Gansey where he needed to be, RoboBee even leading them directly down the path. Blue even said it was fate, a word she halfway detested, that he be there. After all, it was Henry's sweater she had seen months ago. 

And that is a wonderful thing, to know that the five of them only coalesced some months ago, that Henry, while late, is not too late.

All of these revelations, magnificent as they are, do not change the most important facts: Gansey has died for a second time and Glendower was never waiting. These do not seem especially important to Henry but to Gansey and to Blue and to Adam Parrish most oddly enough, they are Important, capital I.

These are things to digest in time.

More pressing is the fact that part of the vast forest surrounding Henrietta is gone, turned to black sludge or simply utterly vanished, no one quite explaining to Henry what unmade means. Parrish and Lynch are confident in their abilities to restore it. They brim with determination and rapidly fall into mutual self-absorption, which is all well and good since part of Lynch's self has come out of him and decided it quite likes being a stick-eating faun-child and stick-eating faun-children, it turns out, are not overly good at caring for themselves. With these distractions, Parrish and Lynch leave Blue and Gansey and Henry virtually alone.

This abandonment, slight as it is, hardly registers with Henry. There is much to talk about, much to process.

Under the shade of a beech tree in 300 Fox Way's grassy backyard, both of them bundled in thick winter coats, thermoses of coffee and tea at their sides, Blue tells him stories of her impossible family and her torrid affair with alien, inhuman Parrish. She explains her poisoned lips, one night whispering her fear of what it all means into the shell of Henry's ravenous ear. She talks of a boy named Noah and the horror he became and of never knowing who he really was.

From the driver's seat of his glorious Camaro steed, the heat on blast, Gansey confides these things, too, only with a more existentialist bent. He's delighted by Blue's family, strong women the lot of them, and only feels monstrous amounts of guilt over betraying Parrish, who apparently is not at all who Henry thinks he is but rather some sort of fearsome angel cum god. It's ridiculous and homoerotic and, when Henry points this out, Gansey's face turns delightfully pink. Gansey is not at all concerned by the ramifications of Blue's lips so overwhelmed is he by dying twice (and, Henry is slowly coming to gather, he is not quite the same boy who once rowed crew and sought a king named Glendower but what the differences are, it is too soon to say) and Noah's disappearance. Henry had thought the answer simple- the ghost boy had accomplished what he set out to do and moved on- but Gansey held out hope long past the others that this was a truth less solid than it seemed. Gradually, they stopped talking about Noah and Cabeswater and even Glendower's name became a passé term. None of them notice that this takes precisely seven days. They have lived a lifetime together. Days might as well be years. They have known one another an eternity.

It is wonderful, the three of them, Gansey, Blue, and Henry, it really is.

"Excelsior," Gansey says after each of their adventures, lesser now than they were but adventures all the same. Henry has come to know the phrase's meaning, not just its literal but its hidden, what it means to Gansey's inner circle, of which he is now a part.

"Onward and upward," he replies with the thrill of the initiated.

For the first time, Henry Cheng belongs.

 

* * *

 

The next day or the next year or the next life, what is in actuality a week and a half after Blue Sargent placed her lips on Richard Campbell Gansey III's and rendered him cadaverous, Henry is back at school.

It is mundane but a comfortable mundane. Henry is not a Pevensie desperate to return to Narnia nor Harry languishing in the Dursley's house. Adventure will find him when it wants to. It is not adventure he seeks but the people one meets along the way. Right here, listening to Gansey talk about classwork, is enough.

This is to his detriment. Henry is so distracted by Gansey's presence he doesn't see his attacker until they are upon him and his face is becoming overly familiar with the ground.

"You," is the first word he hears, snarled hot in his ear, "fucking  _idiot_."

Gansey bends to help. A reptilian hiss erupts from the boy crouched over Henry and keeping him pinned to the ground. Henry holds up a hand to show he is capable of managing this bizarrely unbizzare situation.

"Henry," Gansey begins.

"Can't you see we're busy, golden boy? Find someone else to amuse yourself with. Now you," Henry's assailant says, jerking Henry's face back by way of his hair. He isn't the least bit gentle with it. An hour this morning is laid waste under his short fingers, "What the  _fuck_  are you doing with him?"

"Jiang," Henry says gamely. "It's been a while. This is Gansey. Gansey, Jiang."

Jiang's grip on his hair tightens. The pain sends a delectable shock through Henry's system. "Not funny."

"I thought it was."

Gansey's still standing there, plainly baffled by this scene. Henry is, too, to an extent though, really, he would have thought the personal nature of this conversation apparent.

Jiang is not desirous of an audience. "What are you looking at?" he snarls at Gansey. "Go!"

"I've got this, Gansey Boy." Henry smiles as placatingly as he can when one release of Jiang's hand could send his teeth into the turf. Gansey seems unsure. Jiang is a tangle of knots best unraveled in the company of alcohol. Seeing as Gansey and he have yet to have the "why, yes, my ex is the last person you'd expect unless you paid a fraction of attention and also he hates you for a bevy of reasons that most certainly includes acquaintanceship with one particular Lynch, though as it happens, I'm not entirely certain which", Henry will not be extemporizing today.

Gansey, being a delightfully privileged white male with some semblance of knowledge of said privilege (albeit not much- Henry has work to do), cannot decide whether he is allowed to interfere with this intraracial debacle. It would be funny if Henry weren't being smacked right in the face with all the conversations he has yet to have with Prince Gansey.

And lo, they have reached an impasse. Gansey wants to say something and Henry can't think up a reply that would in any way explain his current situation. Henry isn't in any visible danger, however, and so Gansey accepts Henry's ability to handle his own shit with a request to "buzz" him if things go south. Amazing they didn't become friends sooner.

Once Gansey has vacated the premises, Henry pushes up onto his elbows, letting Jiang slip off his back. He turns, only for Jiang to grip him by the knot of his tie and shove him into the nearest carefully cropped hedge. The prickly leaves- the hedge is a scrim of holly, a lovely evergreen affair that lends a lasting bit of color to the wintry landscape- scratch at Henry's arms and hands. He licks at a scrape that stretches diagonally from the tip of his nose to just above his upper lip.

"Was that necessary?" he asks as if he isn't thoroughly enjoying himself.

"Yes," Jiang answers flatly. He studies Henry, his narrow eyes unreadable. "Do you have any idea how many people died last weekend?"

 _No, Mother,_  Henry hears himself thinking,  _how many?_

"Four" is his prompt response. "Or so. Is that a problem?"

Jiang scowls down at him. It's much easier to read his expression now: he's pissed. Henry begins brushing dirt off the front of his sweater. It isn't the one Gansey wore when he died partially because Henry doesn't have it in his possession and partially because he would not wear it if he did. He hums quietly to himself. RoboBee buzzes happily in his pocket. Jiang is paying attention to them. It is a cause for celebration, however minor.

"Four," Jiang says scathingly. "Four."

"You said that already."

Jiang looks like he wants to beat Henry to a pulp. Henry doesn't think he would mind.

"Have you been keeping track, Cheng? I have. Four last weekend, one the week before, a half dozen scattered over the summer and spring. These people are dangerous, Cheng."

Henry's mother is one of "these people", so he isn't sure why Jiang is telling him this.

"A lot of people are dangerous."

"Not like this." Jiang glances to his left where a few yards away a freshman is standing, curious. With one look at Jiang's malignant expression, he darts away. "There's a man riding around in a car he shouldn't be. It's drawing attention."

The Gray Man.

"He's a friend of mine. Of sorts."

"He killed a man this weekend."

A man who once held Henry, when he was little and innocent and just a touch not normal, for ransom. Henry did not weep to learn of his death.

"Declan doesn't like him," Jiang adds and there is a wound on Henry's heart that will never fade away. Even the name, Declan, said in Jiang's husky voice, burns blue-white, searing Henry's cardiac muscle, lancing through him like the most lasting of electric shocks. In the interim between the second and the third time he had left him, Jiang had come to know Declan Lynch in many ways, several of them carnal. Henry had the impression that courtship ended due to fear on Declan's part and obligation and that Jiang would willingly start it up again at any time. Unlike Henry.

Why is Jiang here? The real reason, not this pretend bull. Henry hasn’t talked to Jiang in three weeks. He’s talked  _at_  him, called after him in the halls, approached him in class, left texts and voicemails that go unanswered.

It's cruel is what it is. It's cruel and it's mean and it's pointless. Jiang has to know Henry is aware of all this.

His mother, that strangely caring yet woefully negligent queen, has kept him informed. She told him to be careful, the wolves are at his door. Niall Lynch, Joseph Kavinsky, the Greenmantles, and Laumonier are all gone without anyone to take their places. Henrietta is ripe for the picking. She saw a battle in the future, one in which it would be best for him to not become embroiled.

Henry, in his turn, told her an assassin had laid claim to the valley. He had a psychic for a bedmate. He did not mention how he learned this or the bedmate was Maura Sargent.

"Don't be foolish," his mother replied. "This is not over yet."

 _I don't care_ , Henry wanted to scream.  _These petty arguments are none of my concern._

"Yes, mother" was all he said.

He wishes he had a mother he could say other words to. Words like Gansey's in love with someone else. Words like Lynch's sons are awful. Words like two boys died the day Joseph Kavinsky did and I fear there will be more.

Jiang snaps his fingers in front of Henry's face, drawing him from his self-reflection.

"You shouldn't be hanging out with Gansey. People get hurt around him, same as Lynch. It's only a matter of time before you do, too."

"So?" The fun's fled from this afternoon. Henry doesn't need warnings, especially ones delivered with a taste of things he can't have. Gansey's got a girlfriend and Lynch is happy with Parrish, who is frankly terrifying. The Vancouver crowd, last Henry saw, was pairing up, too. Henry doesn't need Jiang here, reminding him of what he can't have.

"So you need to be fucking careful. Didn't anyone ever teach you that?"

Careful got Henry a group of followers he struggles to care about. Careful got him placed here, where he could keep watch over the Lynch consortium.

"I already have a protector," Henry says quietly. He stands up and dusts the rest of his clothes off. Disappointment fills his chest with lead. "Thank you for trying to look out for me but you really don't need to."

Jiang makes a rude noise. He spits on the ground. "Yeah? Where's Koh now?'

"Probably back at the house," Henry says wearily.

"Worthless," Jiang declares. "You go to DC with Gansey following a pack of ravens and where is he?" Henry doesn't even begin to wonder where Jiang learned this. "You don't even like driving, Cheng." It's true. He doesn't. There's something wrong with how Henry processes numbers. No mathematician, he. "And yet you want to go on a roadtrip with Gansey and his girlfriend. Have you really stooped that low, you'll third-wheel?"

"And what would you propose? Stay here, in Henrietta? Spend all my time where you'll ignore me? I can't stop people dying,  _Jiang_." Henry spits Jiang's name back at him with all the rancor Jiang uses when he says Cheng. He doesn't care if he sounds pathetic. Who does Jiang think he is, giving out warnings like he knows what it's like being under Seondeok's thumb? "I can't stop being my mother's son. You don't like the way Koh does his job. I'm whole, Jiang. He's doing well enough."

"He's not  _doing anything_."

"If there is someone else who'd like to volunteer, they're welcome to step up." Henry looks around in mock fervor. " _Alors_ , there's no one."

Jiang grits his teeth. His nostrils flare. He's so angry he's shaking. Then he averts his gaze and, oh, Henry's eyes are opened. This, this backwards ass scene, this is Jiang saying that is exactly what he wants to do.

The painful band constricting Henry's chest loosens. He licks his philtrum, feeling again the scrape there.

He wants so badly to settle his hands on Jiang's hair's-breadth too wide hips. He takes him in, the pale skin, the shaking, the prominent bones.

“When's the last time you slept, Jiang?” he asks gently. It's the easiest question in a litany that boil down to  _why aren't you taking care of yourself? You're the one who said it wasn't real_.

Jiang drops his hands. He sniffs, scrubbing his nose with the back of his hand. “So you care now, do you, Mr. President.”

“I think I've made my position quite clear.”

Jiang laughs bitterly. “Doesn't seem that way when you're out gallivanting with  _Gansey_.” He says the name with particular acidity.

“Are you jealous?” Henry wants to hear him say yes so very badly.

“No.” Jiang sniffs again. Another cold, most likely. As far as Henry knew, he's never gotten into anything harder than pills. “I just don't like you spending time with him or Lynch.”

Henry didn't particularly enjoy spending time with Lynch, either.

“Can I–“

Jiang looks up. Wary, so wary. All the time.

“Please, I just want to touch you.”

A trace of a frown. Then Jiang's hand darts out and grabs Henry by the waist. With a shudder, Jiang does the last thing Henry is expecting: he presses his cheek against Henry's chest and lets Henry wind his arms around him. Henry takes it for what it was and rests his chin against Jiang's short hair.

Jiang's breath comes in shuddering gasps.

“Are you alright?”

“You know I'm not.”

Henry had meant by Jiang standards was he alright. He could feel the no in the way Jiang's clothes hung loose off his form and in the draw of his face.

He looks weak. That’s it. He feels gaunt in Henry's arms, more energy coursing through an overworked frame than boy.

This is the first time Jiang has let Henry near him in three months and it’s clear that those month have been more hellish for one of them than the other. Henry sighs.

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“I know Skov came to talk to you. I don't need you to treat me like a fuckup, too.”

“I'm not.” Henry pulls back to look at Jiang’s face. He contemplates kissing him.

Jiang grips the front of Henry's sweater and drags him back. Mixed signals, always.

"You're such an idiot," he says, his voice muffled by Henry's sweater. "Don't you know how dangerous those guys are?"

Henry wants to say  _no more than you or me_  but it's not true. It simply isn't. There have been too many incidents and too many bodies for that to be true. Gansey on his own- Henry suspects that would be different. But it's never Gansey on his own.

"I don't know what you want me to say," Henry says.

Jiang rubs his face in the space between Henry's collarbones. "I should be telling you to forget this ever happened," he muses. "I should be walking the fuck away from your stupid self and not looking back."

"So why aren't you," Henry replies and it isn't really a question. His pulse throbs in his throat. "If you want me to go, I'll go."

It's like knives piercing his skin, the gaze coming from those wonderfully vicious eyes.

“I swear to God," Jiang hisses, "if you leave-“

“I'm not going to,” Henry interrupts and he means it. “As long as you'll have me, I'm not going anywhere.”

He expects Jiang to give some cruel, biting comeback. It doesn't come.

"I have class," Henry murmurs, fingers spinning over the bony knob at the top of Jiang's spine. 

"You're skipping," Jiang says, pulling away. He grabs Henry by the tie, wraps it around his fist, and begins to drag him along. It's either go or be choked. Still, Henry hesitates. Jiang looks back over his shoulder. "Unless you want to stay?"

"No," Henry says, a smile forming on his lips. "Not at all."


	13. Chapter 13

“What are you doing down here?” Lee-Squared asks upon finding Koh camped out for the night on the couch.

Koh lifts his head from the pillow. He's been playing Candy Crush on his phone for the last hour and has already beaten all of Ryang's high scores. The accomplishment is simultaneously thrilling and sad. Thrilling because tonight is the first night Koh has ever played the game and sad because Ryang's high scores aren't all that high. The theme music is rather satisfying, though. “Cheng kicked me out.”

“What? Why?”

Koh looks at him.

“He's not supposed to be here." Lee-Squared's round face scrunches up earnestly. "Koh, he's not allowed.”

“And what are either of us going to do about it?”

It's a genuine question. This is, oh, the fifth time this has happened to Koh in recent weeks? He wishes that were hyperbole.

On the one hand, Koh is glad Cheng's found someone to knock boots with. On the other, he enjoys sleeping in his own bed. Cheng's choice is also questionable. Jiang's always slithered at the edges of their group, avoiding any overt association but perpetually there. There's a story there, one Ryang's proclaimed loudly and Rutherford's filled in more quietly and Cheng hasn't contested in any way at all.

Cheng2 has one tale to tell and SickSteve another. Lee-Squared has no tales, only a general distaste. Koh has come away with the impression that Jiang is either an asshole or a dickhead and Cheng's attraction to him is a rather harmless case of Bad Boy Syndrome.

“Come ‘ere,” Koh says. He sits up and reaches his hands out. He grunts as Lee-Squared settles heavily into his thighs. Lee-Squared's face begins to crumple.

“You're fine, lovely,” Koh reassures him. He kisses his boyfriend's soft, well-moisturized lips and proceeds to show his fragile love that he most assuredly does not mind.

Lee-Squared draws back after a time, out of breath.

“Are you really going to stay here all night?” he asks.

“I've done it before.” Koh slides his hands along the straining fabric of Lee-Squared's leggings.  They are much too small. He looks up at Lee-Squared from under lowered palpebrae. “Unless you're inviting me to your room.”

Lee-Squared flushes. He makes no effort to deny that that is something he would very much want.

“You could tell Auntie Woo.”

Koh would rather do pretty much anything else. It's not that he has any affection for Jiang. That relationship withered before it had an opportunity to bud when Jiang trampled all over Cheng's heart the first time. But Koh can tell Cheng isn't going to listen to him any more than he's going to start dating President Boy and there are some things Koh can't protect his friends from.

Heartbreak, namely.

"It's fine."

"But-"

"L2, you could not pay me to sleep in that room tonight if Jiang gets kicked out."

"Why-?" Lee-Squared's eyes widen in comprehension, although Koh can only assume he took the more physical understanding and not what Koh actually had in mind, which is a melodramatic Cheng less than quietly suffering his way through the early morning hours. "Oh."

 

* * *

 

"I don't get why Cheng lets him in here," Ryang seethes in the next room over, which just so happens to be the laundry room where he has barricaded himself and Rutherford. The latter had come willingly, under the assumption that when Ryang said he had something of importance to discuss it was an invitation to fool around. He was woefully mistaken. "He was selling test answers. Test answers!”

“Uh huh,” Rutherford says from where he's sitting on an overturned hamper, watching Ryang pace back in forth in front of the washing machine. Chin pressed firmly against his fist, he’s more absorbed in the thump-thump-thump of the dryer than Ryang's latest set of grievances. There are so many of them. “Wait, who's allowed where?”

Ryang's so aggrieved he doesn't notice Rutherford hasn't been paying attention.

“Jiang. He's upstairs with Cheng. Imo won't do anything about it.”

Oh. Well. That is unexpected. Rutherford hadn't known they were on speaking terms, though he supposes speaking is not a requirement. He recovers with what is, in his opinion, admirable swiftness. “If she even knows.”

He doesn't bother correcting Ryang on the matter of "test answers". Jiang had been selling cheat sheets, only some of which were derived from test keys he'd pilfered from the admin building and teacher's desks. The rest were simply very detailed notes that appealed primarily to very lazy students who'd rather burn pocket change than pay attention in class. The moral quandary is whether it is worse to provide the means to cheat or to be a cheater yourself. Rutherford, while happy to agree that either side is unethical in pure ethical terms, is squarely on the side of  _not giving a flying fuck_.

“Do you think she doesn't?” Ryang snaps.

Rutherford doubts Mrs. Woo knows everything about her charges. No one would want that much knowledge.

“I'm sure she's had boys sneaking in windows before.”

Ryang gives him a thoroughly sour look.

"What?"

Just because Rutherford's welcome at the door doesn't mean everyone is.

 

* * *

 

SickSteve makes his entrance sometime after midnight.

"Budge over," he says. SickSteve's of the insomniac sort and this is the room where the TV is, so this visit is not entirely unsurprising nor unwelcome. SickSteve is easy enough to get along with if you don't mind a rousing debate that will leave you picked apart to the very bottom of your soul.

SickSteve turns the TV on, making a disgusted noise when he sees Cheng2 left it on CMT. He flips through the guide seemingly without aim, chooses something to get Brad Paisley out of the background, and then keeps searching. Koh uses this time to appraise SickSteve's unusual attire.

"Are you seriously wearing a face mask right now?"

"Fuck you," SickSteve says, his voice thick from an evidently clogged and runny nose. "I ran out of Benadryl."

"So you decided the SARS look was back in?"

Lee-Squared giggles. "Guys, be nice."

SickSteve pats Lee-Squared on the top of his head in mock condescension. "Of course. You know me, L2. I'm the nicest there is."

Lee-Squared's giggles increase.

"You guys want to watch a movie?" SickSteve asks. "I was just upstairs. Cheng forgot about our study sesh and I need to burn those sounds out of my brain."

"Are we not enough for you?" Koh feigns an offended expression. His hands are still on Lee-Squared's wonderfully soft thighs. Koh's own are hard with muscle. Lee-Squared, in contrast, is soft all over. He makes no effort to let go of them. If SickSteve's bothered by it, let him suffer. Koh just got kicked out of his room. Again.

Koh wishes suddenly, fiercely they were in Lee-Squared's dorm room, his boyfriend out of these leggings, his lovely, wide, dimpled ass on display. If Koh were a worse person, he'd pay Cheng back by taking Lee-Squared up to their shared room one day and kicking  _him_  out. See how  _he_  liked it. Unfortunately, he has more respect for Mrs. Woo than that.

Also, he does not see Seondeok being too pleased with him so blatantly disrespecting his employer's son.

(Not that she is his employer, per se. There's no contract between him and her, no paper trail to suggest that they have anything to do with one another. It is simply that Koh's family, the maternal side at least, has for generations specialized in a rather narrow field of protection services and a woman with a semi-mythical appellation called one day and put in a request.)

SickSteve is unperturbed. It's always hard to tell what will upset him. "I wish. Alas, the melody of Cheng getting fucked within an inch of his life will not be vacating my ears anytime soon."

"Do you think he-" Lee-Squared says, only to be cut off by Koh's hands moving to the skin spilling over his waistband. His eyes meet Koh's. Koh shakes his head slightly. This is not a conversation to have with SickSteve. He's not the kind of guy whose feelings you want to force out. Koh can overlook it by skating around the subject: his Lee-Squared will be much more hurt to find out the extent of SickSteve's casual, internalized bigotry.

Tonight, though, or this morning, whichever it is, SickSteve shows no interest in knee-jerk reactions. He traces his finger along the exposed seam of Lee-Squared's leggings. The movement leaves a funny feeling in Koh's stomach. He'd bought the leggings for Lee-Squared a few months back. It isn't exactly astonishing they're struggling to cover his boyfriend. His liberal attitude towards food and his low metabolism have him expanding all over, leaving him soft and wide to his chagrin and Koh's mild distraction. But this feeling is something more, something to do with the familiarity with which SickSteve touches Lee-Squared, the ease with which he holds Koh's gaze as he does it.

This was why Koh could tolerate SickSteve despite his homophobic tendencies. He wanted this, what Koh and Lee-Squared had and more. SickSteve, through his actions, not his words, had always made it abundantly clear he wouldn't be averse to joining in.

He had, once, when Cheng had given them pills that let them see colors beyond the scope of human eyes and feel things no one had ever felt before. The three of them had woken in a tangle, Lee-Squared their grounding force. Despite Koh remembering that night with a particular vividness, the hot slide of bodies slick with sweat, SickSteve's menthol-tinged breath, the little, pleased sounds L2 made as they took him between them, Lee-Squared claims to have only the faintest recollection of the events. SickSteve, of course, has refused discussion. It's only in times like these that he lets slip he not only remembers but longs for a repeat performance.

Koh's thought about it. SickSteve's got a lot of work to do. He's not comfortable with himself, the vestiges of an intolerant family. Besides, Lee-Squared's too fragile for it now. If they tried, he'd feel excluded or replaced. Maybe in the spring, before summer. Things won't matter so much then.

 

* * *

 

Upstairs, Henry Cheng is too preoccupied to even consider caring what his followers think. He's splayed out, face pressed into the pillows, ass up. It's a nice ass, muscles built by horseback riding and long country strolls, all the things a good, rich boy would do that Jiang never did. Cheng's moaning, a low, uninhibited sound created by a good ass-fucking.

Who would have thought Henry Cheng could take thirteen inches of pure silicone? Other than Jiang, of course.

No one else has seen Cheng like this. Of that, Jiang is sure.

And what a sight it is. Cheng's gorgeous at any time, all sharp cheekbones and perfect skin, and rapacious eyes. Like this, high spots of color on his cheeks, ass flushed from the hard flat of Jiang's hand, greedy hole full, he is something else.

Jiang's never been an exhibitionist, more the other side, to be honest. Still, he hopes Litchfield's walls aren't all that thick. The world deserves to hear how pretty Cheng can be.

Jiang rides the friction from the strap-on, relishing the way Cheng comes undone under him. Chasing his own pleasure, Jiang pulls out. He flops back on the mattress with its satin sheet- supposedly better for Cheng's hair- and watches Cheng finish himself off. He's so awkward taking himself in hand, like he's never touched himself in front of someone else before.

Jiang shifts and, oh, yeah, he's wet. Time to unbuckle the strap-on.

It's an odd feeling, being so completely naked. Once, there was a handful of people who had seen Jiang like this. Now, there weren't even that many.

At least Cheng is a decent choice.

(In his head, in a deep, dark corner barricaded by a hundred broken chairs and jagged, rusty pipes, Jiang can admit this isn't true. He wouldn't have come back for Cheng if that were all it was. There are others willing, there always will be. Cheng is something else. But that is a truth hidden behind a pile of wood and metal Jiang is ready to turn into a pyre at any time.)

Cheng watches as Jiang tosses the strap-on to the floor. His gaze as he looks upon Jiang's slick thighs is simultaneously rapturous and avaricious.

Jiang raises an eyebrow.

“Do you want it?” he asks, spreading his folds in an upside-down V with his fingers. “Want to lick the come from between my legs?” He talks to Cheng like he's a dog, like he's so far beneath him laughter bubbles in Jiang's throat from the ludicrousness of his words. Who cares what dogs want? Dogs are made to  _obey_.

“Yes,” Cheng says, throat dry. “Please.”

“Then go ahead.”

Cheng's tongue is featherlight. Jiang shivers. This boy.

"Really," Kavinsky asks, "this is what you replaced me with?"

Jiang startles. His eyes fly open. The ghost leers at him from the edge of Cheng's bed.

"Fuck!" Jiang says. Realizing how that sounds, he adds, pushing Cheng off him, "Get off me."

Kavinsky's coarse laughter fills the room. Jiang's mood is gone. Vanished, just like that. _Go away_ , he thinks. _You've ruined enough._

"And here you always made it out like it was Proko or bust." Not-Kavinsky's smile is hateful. Rage fills Jiang and a certain measure of fear.

Why is it here? How is it? The house should have kept it in. Ghosts weren't supposed to move far from places they had been in death.

No. That wasn't right. Jiang was forgetting this wasn't K, this was never K. This is just some fucking sick joke.

His heart thuds so loudly it takes up all the air in the room. Jiang's breath hitches. Litchfield is almost two miles from the mansion. Ghosts are stronger here 'cause of that current K used to always tap into but it's not the distance that worries Jiang so much as the fact that it's here, in Cheng's bedroom.

 _Fuck you_ , he thinks at it. _What the fuck do you want with me?_

The smile spreads across Not-Kavinsky's face. It stretches wider than any human mouth can go, revealing glittering teeth and pink gums. It stretches farther still, a Cheshire Cat grin on a many month's dead face. "Entertainment, bitch. You haven't come to see me in ages."

Even now, it can barely hold up the facade of being Kavinsky. But it wants something and it's here, in the last place Jiang could possibly tolerate it. He guards these thoughts carefully, placing them behind the same barricade as his most personal.

"What-" Cheng begins to ask. Cheng can't see the ghost, so of course, he has no idea what's happening. Jiang doesn't have time to explain. Not-Kavinsky will notice if his mind is completely blank so he lets shallower thoughts swim to the surface, thoughts like fuck, he didn't think the ghost would keep masquerading as K, thoughts like Skov and Swan haven't reported any sightings, not that he's told them what's going on, thoughts like the three of them barely talk anymore. It will have to be enough to draw the ghost off Cheng's scent.

Jiang shoves Cheng away, snarling out a quick "I need to go". He pulls his boxers and his pants on. Without explanation, he throws Cheng's window open and jumps onto the wrought-iron, spiral staircase. The metal makes a brassy  _thwang_. Jiang doesn't wait for Cheng to try and stop him. He doesn't look back, either. Not-Kavinsky has to think this is nothing, just a diversion with a willing partner, just Jiang being irritable, asocial, ungrateful Jiang.

He's slipping in between the gaps in the barricade. He'll need to shore them up. The holes are too big, too easy to slip through. The ghost will figure it out soon enough if he doesn't- if he doesn't what? He doesn't have a plan. He's running on adrenaline, hoping to fool the supernatural. Fuck fuck fuck fuck  _fuck_.

He needs to formulate a plan. Figure out what the ghost wants, who it really is, and fix this shit.

Jiang fumbles for his keys. He unlocks the car with shaking fingers and slides into his Supra, the leather seats welcoming him like a glove. His eyes flick to the rearview and sideview mirrors. Nothing. Where did it go? Or has he reached the end of its area? K always said the juice, the, the current, came and went. It was getting worse near the end and better somehow. Jiang wasn't really paying attention then. K had gotten- he wasn't  _right_  near the end. It was obvious now what wasn't obvious then but Jiang didn't need obvious, he needed to know about magic and energy and a ghost that thought playing Kavinsky was fun.

"So," Not-Kavinsky drawls, patently amused by Jiang's shudder as it appears in his backseat. It leans forward, gripping Jiang's headrest. As Jiang watches, its nails lengthen, growing sharp enough to prick holes into the fine leather. "Where are we going?"

 

* * *

 

"What-?" Henry asks. Jiang's eyes are fixed on the other side of the room, like he's just remembered some pressing matter that needs attending.

"I need to go."

Jiang slips out the bedroom window. Henry watches from the window as he takes the spiral staircase down to the street and walks swiftly to where his Supra is hidden. He doesn't once look back.

What had spooked him so badly? Henry sighs. Much as he wants them to, there were many places Jiang's world and his failed to align.

One day, Henry is going to ask Jiang what he's running from, who that smiling boy in his passport photo was, what Joseph Kavinsky knew that Henry isn't allowed. He's going to ask why Jiang fell out of the Vancouver crowd and into the Kavinsky crowd. He's going to ask why Seondeok doesn't know his true name when Jiang knows hers, why no one knows Jiang's true name because Jiang is just Jiang, always, only ever Jiang even after four years.

There is another thing. Not half an hour ago, Jiang let Henry explore. He didn't let Henry at his entrance, which Henry didn't mind but he did allow him other places, places that had once been not fully off-limit but certainly restricted. Henry had placed his hand flat on Jiang's firm stomach, slid it up his chest, and over his pec. He wanted to ask, as he had wanted to ask for months, whether he was misremembering or whether Kavinsky did something. Because he remembers fabric before, covering something that no longer needs covering. Now there is no binder or sports bra or scarring. It is as if that extra skin never was.

Henry sighs again. He lays down on sheets still warm from Jiang's presence and breathes in the scent of sex and cigarette smoke and Jiang. A mild winter breeze sweeps in through the open window. Henry doesn't move to close it.

If fortune favors him, Jiang will be back tomorrow.


	14. Chapter 14

Jiang loses the ghost somewhere past the edge of downtown. One minute its talons are centimeters from his right ear, the next it's vanished. He hits the brakes too soon. They shriek as the contents of the car are thrown forward. Jiang slams into the seatbelt. He gags from the pressure on his throat. In a second, the excess inertia is stopped and he's thrown back into his seat, seatbelt in a death grip across his chest. Heart pounding, Jiang fumbles trying to unbuckle it. The door latch is a struggle, too, slipping through his fingers and taking far too much effort to shove open.

He trips getting out of the car and hits the ground, palms scraping against the asphalt.

The air reeks of rubber. Jiang's tires have rubbed themselves raw. Long, inky black marks sully the gray pavement.

Jiang can't breathe.

He scrubs his stinging, gravel-encrusted hands on his jeans. He stares up at the sky. He takes shallow, panicky breaths. He tries not to scream. He barely keeps himself from sobbing.

The ghost doesn't know about Cheng, about the last few weeks, the last few  _years_. It doesn't know what Cheng was to Jiang, no one does. Jiang can pawn what it saw off as a diversion, just him and a piece of willing ass.

The pieces click in Jiang's mind. Slowly, he begins to calm down. There's nothing incriminating. Not-Kavinsky could have watched the whole thing from the second Jiang snuck in through the window and he wouldn't have seen anything to indicate it was more than casual. Jiang had been in the moment. His thoughts were all physical. Cheng's were inconsequential.

Yeah, he can spin this.

Jiang straightens up. Okay, he can do this. He just has to pull himself together. Focus, Jiang.

He walks back the way he came, searching for the spot where the ghost could no longer manifest. Unhelpfully, the ghost doesn't turn up to show him where the invisible line is. Jiang figures it must be a couple yards behind the black marks his tires left. That'll have to do. He snaps a few pictures of the area with his phone.

This is miles from the mansion. How far is the ghost's range?

K talked about this shit. There were limits to how much he could do, how far he could go. If only Jiang could remember.

He racks his brain, searches every crevice and corner and comes up with scraps.

An unstable current. Proko, the forgery, not the real one, being able to tell when K had about maxed it out or when it was fluctuating. It made him tired.

Acid claws at Jiang's throat. He has a burning need to light a cigarette. He ignores both.

The ghost has to be getting a boost from whatever mystical source runs under Henrietta. That's how it can reach all the way out here. It's getting a boost and Jiang doesn't know a single person who could-

Except the one.

Declan Lynch hadn't bothered to hide his family entanglements from a member of Kavinsky's crew. He hadn't talked much but he'd known what K was. A dreamer, he called him, though K would rather style himself a thief. The current, he'd called it a what? A ley line. Indigenous to the area and highly powerful. Jiang doubted he knew much about it, only what a dreamer could do with it.

That information might have been useful six months ago. Jiang needs to know about ghosts, not dreamers.

What about an exorcism? Jiang eighty-sixes that. He's already looked into it. He doesn't have the cash. Besides, who would he even call? The last Catholic priest didn't believe him. Would a daoshi or a Buddhist monk even work (and, God, where would he even find one)? This was an American ghost they were talking about.

He should just burn that mansion down. Fucking slather that shit with salt and blood, grab Cheng, tell Lynch it was his problem, and get the fuck out of town. Jiang's already weighing the logistics in his mind.

Cheng would never agree to it. He'd get one of his goody-two-shoe friends who are the farthest from goody-two-shoes and convince them to try and solve this. Already, he's going to want answers. Fuck.

Jiang can't hide out. He's reached the end of the _gui_ 's reach in one direction. It has access to Litchfield. It saw him with Cheng.  _Fuck_.

He has to find out what it wants. But first, he has to find out how far it can go.

Jiang gets back in the car.

 

* * *

 

The ghost examines its nails. They're humanoid now, dirty and blunt. Jiang braced himself and didn't startle when it reappeared this time. Not-Kavinsky arches an eyebrow at him.

"Overkill much? I'm not going to hurt you, Jiang."

"No, just ruin my evening," Jiang shoots back, eyes hard. "I wasn't looking to put on a show."

Not-Kavinsky pouts. "You keep forgetting to visit me. I thought a little company might jog your memory. And what a surprise I find waiting for me. Henry Cheng, you saucy little minx. Won't Cheng2 be jealous." Laughter, loud and mocking, spills from the phantom's mouth.

Jiang's nostrils flare as he works to keep from combusting. The anger he lets rise to the surface. Behind the barricade, a cooler, more focused aggravation takes place. This isn't Kavinsky. Whoever, whatever the fuck this is, they didn't do their homework. This isn't how he talked, especially not to Jiang. He knew about Cheng, knew about him from the goddamned start.

"He's a sub," he tells Not-Kavinsky. "His guy won't put out. It's convenient."

"He does have those cheekbones." Everyone always raves about Cheng's cheekbones.

"A little straight edge for your type."

Not-Kavinsky grins slyly. "But not yours."

"No."

Jiang lets the conversation falter. The ghost shifts and suddenly it's in the passenger seat. It turns the dial on the radio. The veins on the back of its hand cast long shadows from the light of passing streetlamps.

It's a perfect image of Kavinsky, that's the problem. The mannerisms are wrong, the speech off, the word choices an affectation of an idea rather than a reflection of any reality. A sculpture brought to life, a million photons coalescing into the shape of Joseph Kavinsky.

Why? Why go to all this trouble and not even get the subject right?

Unless Jiang isn't meant to find it. He throws that thought out instantly. The ghost hasn't left. Ghosts can read thoughts. Jiang hasn't been guarding his so well Not-Kavinsky thinks it escaped his suspicion.

It knows. This is all one big game.

From the corner of his eye, Jiang sees the ghost fading. He slows down. They're near the poorer of the two high schools now. The sidewalks are dingier here, the grass more overgrown. Houses are mostly one story, ranch-style affairs with ratty lawns and chain-link fences. Yards are strewn with children's toys. More than one driveway has a junker up on blocks. They're getting into trailer park territory.

The ghost continues to fade. It lifts its sunglasses, showing two eyes that are far less fiery than Jiang was expecting. Perfect copy, all the way through. Even the stick-and-pokes are right.

Fear doesn't grip Jiang now, only determination. How long until the ghost draws too far from its source?

It turns out to be the dirt road leading up to the trailer park. Jiang reverses and heads back the way he came. In seconds, his unwanted visitor is back.

And so it goes. Jiang drives like that all night, the ghost spinning from amusement to boredom, eventually slumping down in the passenger seat and making progressively more sexual faces at Jiang. Jiang figures out it has a wide swath of territory, far bigger than he would like, more kidney-shaped than oval. Litchfield House is hear the center of that area, K's mansion on one side. It doesn't make sense. None of this does.

"You can't escape me," Not-Kavinsky says, throwing an arm behind his headrest. He's right. Downtown, the burbs, the slums, the highway. The ghost can get to all or part of them.

"What do you want from me?" Jiang asks.

"Your attention," the ghost says. It drags an icy finger along Jiang's jawline. "And for you to remember your place. You came looking for me. Don't go backing out now."

Staring the ghost dead in the face, Jiang puts the car in drive once more.

 

* * *

 

Eight a.m. the next morning, without having slept a second, Jiang slaps a hundred dollar bill down on a desk in the admin building. The secretary, a big, black woman with a penchant for switching up her lipsticks, a fact notable both for their vibrancy and unusual colors, continues to stare at her computer monitor, completely unperturbed by this interruption. Her attitude is an admirable strain of the local: as dismissive of the students she manages as they are of her. She is a secretary by profession, not preference. This is Calla Johnson and her true calling, so they say, is as a psychic.

"Not much you can do with that kind of money around here, boyo."

"I need a charm," Jiang says. "Or a talisman. A charm of some sort."

She eyes the crisp bill. She lives in a cramped witch's den over on Fox Way with a hundred other women and their children. They scrape by but not by much.

"For what? I don't give out study aids."

"Protection. Against ghosts."

She doesn't snort. "Let me touch your bag," she says.

Jiang places a hand on his messenger bag. He shoves it slightly behind him. "No."

"Hmph." She swivels her chair to look him over. After a moment, she makes a decision. "Hold onto your money. Come by 300 Fox Way this afternoon. No earlier than three. There's a sign out front; you can't miss it. I'll see what I can do then."

 

* * *

 

Jiang goes alone. Of course, he fucking goes alone. The only person he knows who even halfway believes in the psychics is Mrs. Woo. They're an amusement, an afternoon diversion for Aglionby students. Only locals would ever think of going to them seriously.

He lights a joint in the car and stares at the sign out front. Psychic readings. Honestly, he can't tell whether Calla's attitude makes this seem more or less like a budget-bargain scam.

Cheng hasn't texted him yet to ask about last night. Jiang grinds his teeth together. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. He was supposed to be reliable this time.

Whatever. He'll have time to explain when he has the amulet in hand. He'll get a protection on Cheng and then he'll explain all of this.

Jiang drops the stub in a cup holder. He gets out of the car.

The door opens after one knock. A dumpy, brown-skinned woman opens the door.

The front hallway smells like sandalwood and children, a vile mixture of spoiled milk, melted candy, and human shit. The woman-Jimi, she says her name is- leads him down a hallway.

Another woman who could easily be Jimi's daughter or granddaughter sits up from where she had been reclining on a worn couch when she sees Jiang. She's beautiful, long, dark, curly hair and heavy-lidded dark eyes. A prominent nose mars the effect only slightly. She runs a hand over her hair and looks at them with only the mildest of curiosity. They pass her by.

Jimi leads Jiang to a room with a drawing room dominated by a weathered table set with a lace runner and candles. A cone of incense leaves a winding trail of smoke in the air. Calla's there, in the company of yet another brown-skinned woman.

"You have the money?" Calla asks. He slides her the hundred dollar bill. The other woman holds it up to the light.

"You said you wanted an amulet," Calla says. "For ghosts."

"He was friends with the weasel," the young woman says. She's come to stand, hip-cocked, against the doorway. "He knows the snake."

"Orla," either Jimi or the other woman says. Jiang can't tell which. They look too much alike. That's powerful, isn't it? A roomful of related women, all witches.

"What?" Orla says. "He doesn't know what I'm talking about."

Jiang promptly dismisses her as an idiot. He's heard Kavinsky called a lot worse than  _weasel_.

Someone asks what kind of ghosts.

"Why does it matter?"

"This area is chock full of spirits," Calla retorts. "What works for some won't work for all."

"For example," the only woman whose name hasn't been revealed says, "a haunting from a loved one or a friend would be different from a local specter."

"It's not a friend. I don't know who it is."

"What does it want from you?" the woman presses.

"I don't know. Are you going to sell me the amulet or not?"

"You sure you don't want an exorcism instead?"

He's considered it. A month or so ago, he talked to the priest at St. Agnes, the only Catholic church in town. The man had told him while there were some members of the Catholic Church who did such things, it was not something he personally engaged in and Jiang would be better off seeking psychiatric help. That had led to looking up those members and realizing he did not have the funds to persuade them to de-ghost a house all the way out in Henrietta. "I don't have that kind of money."

A look passes between the women. It is the look of a group of females with different goals and different minds who have separately and through various means come to the exact same conclusion.

The unnamed woman places her hands on the table and leans forward. "My name is Maura Sargent. My daughter's name is Blue. If Joseph Kavinsky is back, you need to tell me."

 

* * *

 

"I don't need to tell you shit," Jiang snaps. "Give me something that'll protect or give me my money back."

"Protect who?" Calla asks. "You...or someone else?"

Jimi's shuffling a deck of frayed cards. Smudges from a hundred fingers are smeared across the backs. Seeing Jiang watching, she smiles. "Sit down. Let me read your cards while Calla gets you squared away. Consider it on the house."

Jiang doesn't like it but he sits. Jimi hands him the cards, instructing him to shuffle them. Maura mutters something about the I Ching.

Jiang takes the cards in hand. They're larger and thicker than normal cards, decorated with images of saintly women and their haughty-looking cats, all drawn in a very 70's style. Everything's cartoonish and that particular set of colors and fonts that point instantly to sometime between 1969 and 1980.

They assault him while Jiang stacks and restacks the deck.

"You're a good student," Calla declares. "Surprising, considering your choice of friends."

"How well do you know Blue?" Maura asks.

"I'll take the cards now," Jimi says.

They're not accustomed to working together. Calla and Maura move with one other in a comfortable, slightly uneven rhythm. Jimi and Orla are dissonant notes in their melody.

This, then, is a solidarity play. They think he's dangerous, Maura especially.

"I don't," Jiang says, interrupting his study of the women to answer Maura. It's true. He's never met the girl, only heard stories about her via Cheng.

"But you know her friends."

"It's a small town. I know a lot of people." Jimi is about to pass the cards to Calla. "Don't. I don't want her touching them."

Calla's harlequin green lips pucker. Jimi reshuffles the cards for several minutes, then lays them out in a pyramid pattern, one at the top, then a row of two, then three, and finally four.

"Seriously?" Orla asks, peering at the cards with a quizzical expression. "You're going to use that spread?"

"It's what's best," Jimi replies. Maura hums in agreement.

A child with tangled, dirty blonde hair toddles past the doorway, ignored by all.

"What's wrong with the spread?" Jiang asks. He doesn't really care. He's not here for cards.

Orla blinks at him with her big, dark eyes. There's the slightest dab of shimmering brown on her eyelids to make them more sensual. The effect is lost on Jiang.

"There are many different tarot spreads," Maura answers. "The tetraktys spread is most useful for gaining a holistic view of a person. Jimi could ask you to pick a card and read it. It would give her an idea of who you are fundamentally. This does the same with a heavier emphasis on specifics."

So this is a test. Jiang grimaces. If he didn't have so much money invested...

"And what are my specifics?"

"Patience," Jimi cautions. She begins flipping the cards over.

She starts from the bottom right of the pyramid.

"The Fire card," she says, "represents creativity, will, and ambition. Yours is the Knight of Cups reversed. You are a deceiver by nature and jealous." She flips the card to the left over. "The Air card represents your current strategies towards your goals. King of Swords, reversed. You are distrustful and paranoid." She looks at him, sympathy in her eyes. Jiang doesn't know what to say.  _He_  didn't ask for a card reading. "The Water card is your emotional self. The Six of Cups." She seems surprised by this card. "This is a happy card. You wish to return to the good memories of your childhood."

About then is when Jiang stops listening. Because Jiang? Did not have a happy childhood. He did not have a bad childhood but by age five, he realized he was a boy and by age ten, he realized no one he already knew was going to agree with him. So at thirteen, he drained his sister's savings account and fucked off to America and blew a shitton of money trying to set himself up at a school where nobody would give him grief for having a silicone and not a flesh-and-blood dick.

"Great," Jiang says when Jimi's finished telling him how his "Premise" card- the Wheel of Fortune, hilariously enough- means luck is on his side. "Can I get that amulet now? I paid for it."

"That you did," Maura answers dryly. "Calla, be a dear and go get the boy his amulet."

Calla shoves her chair back. She leaves the room with an air of intense pissiness. Maura, a finger pressed under her jaw, stares at Jiang. He stares blankly back. From somewhere down the hall, a woman begins shrieking in a European language. There's a great deal of shuffling and rifling, opening and slamming drawers, and Calla yelling at someone named Gwenllian to shut up or die.

Calla barges back into the room, a bracelet in hand. She places it on the table and shoves it in Jiang's direction. "Onyx for protection, quartz for amplification."

"This is it?" Jiang asks, picking up the bracelet and turning it over. It's simple, some beads on an intricately knotted hemp cord. Like the sort of thing you'd make at the sort of summer camp Jiang never had a chance to go to. Etched on one side of the black stone is a six-pointed star enveloped by a circle. On the other is what looks like either a crude fork or a very poorly drawn upside-down broom.

"The Seal of Solomon and algiz, also called elhaz," Orla explains, sounding tremendously bored by the afternoon's events. She shakes her arm, making her innumerable bangles clack. "Powerful symbols of protection."

She mistook his question as a request for information. Jiang just forked over a hundred bucks. They handed him a hippie's art project.

Calla sneers. "Looks aren't everything, rabbit. That will protect against ghosts or evil spirits, provided you don't go looking for them."

"I am not a rabbit." Who even insults someone like that?

Calla's irritable face splits in a fiendish smile. "Aren't you? You seem awfully fearful for someone who thinks we're frauds."

Jiang doesn't feel the need to answer that. He sweeps the amulet into his pocket and makes for the door. He's already running Cheng's typical afternoon through his head to find the best place to intercept him.

A woman runs after him, stopping him before he gets to the door. It's Jimi, the dumpy one.

She thrusts a gauzy purple sachet at him. Her puffy, pillow-soft fingers brush against his as he takes it. "This is asphodel mixed with salt for your pocket. You'll want to cover all of your bases. The amulet is strong but you should protect yourself as well. Salt is easy to get and cheap. Sprinkle it wherever you can. Doors and windowsills especially. A dish of vinegar on the dresser," she says. "Let it evaporate overnight. It will keep any spirits and negative energy away. Burn white sage when you think the ghost is gone. The more smoke, the better. You do these things and all but the most stubborn of ghosts will be gone, I promise you."

She puts up a hand before he can tell her just how much he's not going to pay for her advice.

"You're doing good, child, protecting him like that. We might as well give you your money's worth." She opens the front door. "Now, run along. Your boyfriend's waiting for you."

 

* * *

 

"He's harmless," Jimi says when the boy has left.

"He's not harmless," Maura crankily snaps back. She blows out the candles and begins straightening up the room. Orla's already flounced upstairs. She has a caller coming in three, two, one seconds- now, actually. "He is the very definition of not harmless."

"Your hitman could take care of him." Calla reappears in the doorway with a bottle of bottom-shelf whiskey and three glasses.

"I'm not sending Dean after a child."

Calla and Jimi tactfully avoid mentioning how, only a few months ago, she had been very close to doing just that.

Maura sighs. "I suppose he is harmless to Blue."

Calla pours them each two fingers of amber-colored liquid. "What could he even do? Richie Rich's already died this year." She means Blue's boyfriend, the charming Richard Campbell Gansey III, who recently had a ghost problem of his own. Though Jimi supposes it could be considered more Blue's problem than anyone else's.

"True." Maura sips at her glass, considering. Calla's wasting no time knocking back her own. "Jimi, you had the best read on him."

This wasn't saying much. Now that Persephone's no longer among them, Jimi has attained the less-than-vaunted title of the most precise of 300 Fox Way's precognitives. It's been a difficult promotion. Jimi hasn't anything near Persephone's scope. Numbers are her area of expertise. Number and dates.

"He's harmless," she repeats, setting a lighter to a bundle of sage. Even if she couldn't feel any paranormal residue on him, it was better to be safe. The kind of ghost that would send a nonbeliever to psychics was not to be trifled with. "To us, at least. He won't cross paths with your daughter, Maura, if he can avoid it."

"His dislike of Blue worries me."

"Can you blame him? Consider his circumstances," Jimi says. She smiles to herself, going a little misty-eyed as her future sight shows her whose arm the bracelet will end up on and the tender yet tense episode that will soon occur. "The poor boy's in love with her Henry Cheng."


	15. Chapter 15

Cheng2 wakes from a dreamless sleep to find Proko's ghost sitting at the foot of his bed. Cross-legged, cheek resting against his hand, he has the air of someone who's been there for hours.

"Hi," Cheng2 croaks. Sleep sand clings to the corners of his eyes. His throat is a desert and his heart the burning sun overhead. He scrabbles for the cup on his nightstand. Keeping his eyes locked on Proko, he gulps the water inside. Who would ever have thought one day Cheng2 would find frosty, barely-blue eyes attractive or bruise-blotched skin so entrancing? If his heart is a sun, Proko is a moon, a shadow of himself but still thin and lovely and just raw enough at the edges to feel unquestionably real. Cheng2 can't help drinking him in. It's been so many days since Proko's last visit. He thought he'd moved on.

"I can't," Proko says quietly, unfolding himself. He slides off the bed. "Not yet. Come with me. I have something to show you."

You shouldn't follow a phantom. And yet, Cheng2 has never before felt like he could trust a person so much. He pushes his covers aside. "Now?"

"Yes." Prokopenko smiles. His smile is gentle and a touch sad. He holds out a hand. Cheng2 grasps it, gasping at the chill. In a moment, the sensation's deadened and the hand feels almost warm. It's softer than he remembers, less calloused. That smile, though, that's still the same.

He follows Proko downstairs and out the back door.

 


	16. Chapter 16

"What," Mrs. Woo asks in brittle, Korean-accented English, her arms on her grandmotherly hips, "do you think you're doing?"

It's a fair question. It's one a.m., cold as shit, and Jiang is circling Litchfield House with a 48-ounce container of iodized salt. Still, Mrs. Woo and Jiang don't exactly have a warm relationship. More glacial, in fact. He shakes a liberal amount onto the frozen ground before answering. "Protecting your tenants." His breath is a white cloud, his nose simultaneously dry and runny. Heat radiates from the open front door. There's a halo of light behind Mrs. Woo.

"I see."

Jiang expects her to continue questioning him or to tell him to move on, possibly even ask whether he's high and, if so, how.

She sniffs. "Don't get any in the flowerbeds."

The halo disappears as the door slams shut, followed by the unnecessarily hard latch of the lock. It's a nominal protection. He'll still get in through the window, as they both know. He was up there a short while ago, to give Cheng the bracelet. Cheng had been in bed already. He hadn't kicked up a fuss about the amulet, not even a joke about it not being his style, just took Jiang's word for it that he needed to wear it. With that kind of response, Mrs. Woo couldn't hope to keep Jiang out.

With that kind of response, Jiang couldn't not do this.

He begins a second ring around the house.

 

* * *

 

Jiang's in a Citgo bathroom near the edge of town when the ghost appears. He finishes tucking his packer into place with his eyes closed, resisting the urge to sigh.

"I could have fixed that for you," not-Kavinsky says and it sounds so terrifyingly like the boy under the bull Jiang can't ignore it. "I could have given you everything you wanted."

Jiang doesn't answer. He reminds himself that this is not K, this is not Kavinsky, this is nothing more than a bored specter looking for a thrill.

He presses a fist on top of the bathroom sink.

"Don't ignore me. You know I could've."

There's an empty canister of salt on the floor behind the Supra's driver's seat. There might be a few grains left. If Jiang can get this thing to follow him, and  _damn if this thing won't stop following him_ , he could throw some at it.

Does Citgo sell salt? Pretzels, probably. He could flick them at it. That would be almost amusing.

"Jiang," Not-Kavinsky says, as if it has any right to. It sounds so right, Jiang has to remind himself it's not K. It's  _not_.

And yet...

There was a gas station bathroom once, a ratty one like this, where they'd all crowded inside, K, Proko, Swan, Skov, and him, too wasted to take turns, just all trying to get their shit together long enough to drive home. It had to have been, what? Sophomore year.

Jiang had wanted to use the bathroom alone and he'd kicked them out, Proko volunteering to guard the door, and he didn't know until he'd come outside that K wasn't just waiting but watching. Knowing.

"I can fix that for you," he said then, just one tense off from the ghost now. "Just think, you could go all by yourself, like a big boy. No mommy listening to you tinkle."

Jiang had told him to fuck off. He pretended he didn't know what K meant when they all knew what K meant, even Skov, who didn't know much of anything.

Jiang's fist uncurls on the dirty edge of the sink. He looks at Not-Kavinsky through the mirror's reflection. It's not K.

 _You did enough_  are the words Jiang never got the chance to say.  _You gave me what no doctor would. You were a fucking dick but you gave me that._

If there was one selfless thing about Joseph Kavinsky, it's what he did with his dreams. He could create anything, do anything, yet most of his gifts were tipped out into the hands of other people, with no more expected obligation than enjoyment.

That's how the pills started. They were experiments, copies of drugs at first, shape and texture and side effects, then ideas in blister pack form. Try this, try that. Enjoy yourself. Be happy. Go out of your mind with it. Who gives a fuck.

K's eyes used to greedily tracked the line of your throat when you swallowed. He lived off of other people's attention, their appreciation. He was a star and they were his audience. He gave to receive.

No one expected more. And yet, Skov would find Vicodin, better quality and in higher doses, on his bedside table. Swan would get liquors in every flavor and flavors that didn't exist. Proko got everything there was to get and, when he wasn't Proko anymore, K gave him things to forget, things to tamp down the jealousy and swallow the unhappiness.

Jiang didn't want K's pills, not at first. The experiments were temperamental then. Jiang could get better on the market. What he couldn't get, he could do without.

The thing was, Kavinsky wasn't the best because he was a dreamer. Jiang has seen the products of other dreamers, how much more imaginative they are. K's genius came from his attention to detail, his obsession with results. In terms of dreams, he was less artist than scientist.

Jiang would rather remember this differently. He'd rather forget that K, a kid struggling with his own identity, made an effort to help someone who didn't even like him. But Jiang, who lies about everything else, can't find a way to spin this.

Kavinsky paid attention. He noticed the bruises on Jiang's ribs and the damage Jiang was doing to his already beleaguered lungs. He found out, somehow, about all the doctors who refused Jiang help, telling him he was too young, telling him to wait until puberty had taken him even farther from the path he desired. Jiang's whole body was against him, he couldn't find the help he needed and K, for reasons unknown, took it as a personal affront.

"I can fix that," he said, time and again, like some joke of a handyman.

"I'd rather you didn't," Jiang would snarl, always so vicious, always so ready to fight. "I like having my organs in place."

"Take it off," K would demand when Jiang's shortness of breath grew too pronounced. "When's the last time you took it off?"

"Fuck you," Jiang would reply. They were just bruises. It was just a ribcage. Soon, he'd find a doctor willing. "You're the one with a bird chest."

He fought and he pushed back, not because fighting was necessary but because jealousy was burning his insides like acid and Joseph Kavinsky had things Jiang thought he could. There was anger and vitriol and the soul-burning need to be better all the damn time because being first on anyone's list wasn't a luxury Jiang had.

But eventually, when he found no one willing to do the operation, and K had begun doing things more impossible than improbable, the results steady, regular, exact, he let him try.

It wasn't an easy event to recall. Jiang shuddered to remember even the smallest bit

The important thing was you couldn't see what K did and Jiang's binder was no longer needed. The important thing was the change to Jiang's hormones still worked now, six months after.

The important thing was Joseph Kavinsky once gave Jiang something he needed because  _he_ wanted to and  _he_ could and Jiang still hated him with every fiber of his being for not wanting life enough to stay.

"Go away," Jiang tells the ghost. "I've had enough of your shit today."

It fades out, clearly displeased with his unwillingness to play. Jiang groans and splashes water on his face.

He opens his eyes and is startled to find himself staring at the Supra's dirty ceiling. He doesn't remember leaving the bathroom, let alone getting back in his car. Fuck, he's tired.

What even is this shit? Visiting psychics, dumping salt in people's years. His life's turning into a mess. It used to make sense, in a bizarre way, all the strange things that happened around here. Things were weird but everything came through K and K was such a bullshitter you could never really know what was a forgery and what was shit that'd passed hands so many times no one knew the source.

Jiang rubs at the shadows under his eyes. Cheng's got the amulet. Litchfield House is protected. The ghost is still out there but he's not bothering anyone else. Jiang would have heard.

The Supra's engine rumbles, unhappy with idling, causing Jiang's leg to shake. Ne-Yo croons about love on the radio. Jiang shuts him up with a slap of the dial.

He drives back into town, does a loop around the Vancouver crowd's neighborhood. All's quiet.

He presses his fingers against his closed eyelids, pushing his eyeballs deeper into their sockets. It makes his eyes stop aching for a blessed second. He should go back to the dorms, his own bed. Sleep for the first time in two days. Stop feeling like he's running from an impossible force. 

He drives past Litchfield House again.

The houses in this part of downtown are old but well-furnished, shabby chic as they call it. Locals, almost exclusively. The Vancouver crowd is an oddity, Aglionby encroaching on the Henriettan, the unease tempered by Mrs. Woo's implacability. She's not Henriettan by birth but she's been here so long she's a fixture of the area, an old woman who keeps her charges tolerable and, when they get too rowdy, kicks them out. Her boys are raven-looking, not raven-tempered, and this makes her respected, in a fashion.

Jiang curves around a fallen branch and follows the road uphill. Trees begin to line the left side of the street as Jiang moves further from downtown. It's wilder here or more unkempt, depending on how you see it. Cracks wind across the pavement. Potholes of varying sizes, some deep enough to destroy a tire, provide a tedious obstacle course. In about a mile, if you keep going straight, the road will turn to dirt, grooves showing the tracks of cars previous. The potholes there can destroy a car.

Less because of the potholes and more because that road goes absolutely nowhere, Jiang takes a right. It leads him on a fifty-five degree downhill towards the road to the highway. From there, Jiang will take a left at the stop sign, which will lead him down a backway that curves behind the dorms before heading into the mountains.

He's turning onto the backroad when he sees a teenage boy walking barefoot through the streets. It isn't the most uncommon sight. Aglionby boys party hard. You get drunk enough, shoes aren't an issue, even in November with slush on the ground. A tanked idiot, especially  _that_  tanked idiot, getting frostbite is not Jiang's problem.

Until he sees the look on that too familiar face.

Jiang curses. He rolls his window down. "Hey, Cheng2!" No answer. Cheng2 continues walking as if in a daze. The bottoms of his feet are wet and turning black from walking atop asphalt. "Cheng2!"

Jiang throws his car into park and steps out.

"Broadway!"

There's no response. The boy keeps walking, eyes fixed on something far ahead. Jiang has been in Henrietta far too long to ignore such obvious signs of magical interference.

"Fuuuuck." It couldn't have been Rutherford or SickSteve? Hell,  _Ryang_  would be more bearable than Cheng2.

God, Jiang hates that name. _Henry Broadway's_ the asshole who got Jiang thrown out of Litchfield. The official reason was stealing test scores. Unofficially? Broadway was jealous. Jealous of Jiang and his closeness with Cheng, jealous of Cheng's interest, jealous of the fact that unknowable Jiang was preferred to too knowable Chengfucking2.

What really got Jiang's goat, though, was that, when Jiang left, Cheng2 wasn't satisfied. He was hungry for experience, for thrills. Kavinsky never turned anyone away from his parties. All were allowed in, if not welcome.

Cheng2 came. He raced. He smoked. He lit a few sparklers.

That wasn't where Cheng2 went wrong. If he went wrong. Did he go wrong? Jiang never asked what he was being punished for. But he could make a guess.

Two things. One, Prokopenko didn't often show much interest in people outside the group. He belonged to K and he reveled in that belonging. Cheng2 was an exception.

Jiang doesn't know why, what drew them to each other. It would be a pointless thought exercise to guess. The forgery did what he wanted. K had neglected him, after all, and Jiang wasn't interested in fucking something out of K's head. Cheng2 was there and too annoying for most people to tolerate. Proko could make friends with anyone.

(That was one thing K kept. He remade Proko so many times, a long series of upgrades that obliterated the last of the true Proko's personality, leaving an end result so fucked Jiang had barely been able to give a fuck when its plug was pulled.)

(He cried his eyes out when an Adele song came on the radio two days later but that was  completely, entirely, undeniably unrelated.)

Their courtship didn't last that long because, and here is the second thing, Cheng2 is catty. He sucks up to those in power. He thinks that gives him free reign to say what he wants and what he wants to say is mean, stupid, and often needlessly cruel. And he pointed those words at Jiang and it got back to K and K didn't like what he heard. He didn't ask Jiang how Jiang felt or what he wanted to do, only whether Jiang wanted to take part or not. It's possible the timing was a coincidence and it wasn't about Jiang at all.

But that was then and this is now. Cheng wouldn't want Jiang letting Cheng2 go.

Jiang switches to his brights and eases the car along. He doesn't have to get Cheng2 into the Supra, he just has to follow him. If he loses his toes from frostbite, still not fucking Jiang's problem.

 

* * *

 

Prokopenko's ghost beckons. _Follow me,_ its crooked finger and gentle smile seem to say.  _I have so much to show you._

He doesn't need to beckon. Cheng2 will follow. He'll follow Proko anywhere.

Distantly, he can hear yelling. It's muffled, stopping almost as soon as it began. Proko looks back at him, still with that sad smile. Cheng2 wants to make it so he never has to be sad again.

"Are we almost there?" he asks. He can't tell how much time has passed since they left Litchfield. Everything turned sunny and sepia-toned when he touched Proko's hand. It's got to be night still, even if it feels like they've gone awfully far. Does it matter how far they've gone? Proko will be happy once he shows Cheng2 this.

"Almost."

Cheng2 wonders what it must be, this surprise of Proko's. A secret place? An object he lost in life? Proko places a finger to his lips and his smile warms.

Then everything breaks. A hand grabs Cheng2, yanking him back savagely. Proko vanishes. Cheng2 whirls around, ready for a fight. About to verbally abuse his assailant- he was close, Proko was going to show him something important, how could you, how could you, how could you; do you know what you've done- he falls short. Jiang, Cheng's Jiang, scowls up at him.

Then Cheng2 notices his surroundings. It's night again, sepia turned to darkness and shadows, the only light coming from the phone set to flashlight in Jiang's hand. The wind howls around them. Trees and grass shudder and bow to the heavy gusts. A small rock tumbles down the side of the mountain, rolling, rolling, rolling through brush and trees and boulders until it hits the path. To the right is the faint blue-black outline of treetops on a thirty degree slope and a paved road far, far below. "Where am I?"

"A backroad," Jiang says sourly. "I had to walk the past half mile. This shit's barely more than a hiking trail."

Cheng2 swallows. The road hugs the mountain tightly. One misstep and they'd tumble right off. Jiang, Cheng2 realizes, hadn't grabbed him to get his attention. Cheng2 had been facing right. Had he kept walking, he would have gone right over it.

"Come on." Jiang turns away from the cliff. "You can catch a ride with me."

Cheng2 has little choice but to follow. He has no idea where he is. There are a hundred ridges with trails just like this. He's hopelessly lost and cold. It's hovering around freezing and he's in pajamas and barefoot. Survival is the way he came. It's the only decision there is.

As they make their way down the cliffside, he can't escape the nagging notion that it would be better to turn back. Proko wanted to show him something at the summit. This was the wrong way.

He stops where he is.

"I need to go back," he says.

Jiang's face is a mask of irritation. "Excuse me, what?" 

Cheng2 knows he's right. It's all clear now. Proko's waiting for him up there. Something at the edge of that cliff is important. This must be a test. Jiang would never try to save him. Proko's testing him, making sure he really wanted what he had to show him. This isn't Jiang. This is just some vision. Of course. It makes so much sense.

"He's waiting for me," Cheng2 says, turning around. "I have to go back." He sucks in the cold mountain air. God, how could he have been so easily swayed? The dirt is cold under his bare feet. It grounds him, both physically and in his resolve. He nearly stumbles on a stray rock but he catches himself. His foot stings. No matter. Up that mountain, on that cliffside, is something important.

He can hear the fake Jiang behind him. He's angry at Cheng2's refusal to follow him. Cheng2 laughs. What does he care if Jiang's angry? It's Jiang.

There's yelling, which Cheng2 ignores. He won't be distracted. He has a goal and it's up there, not down here, arguing with or even listening to Jiang. Just a couple hundred yards more. Cheng2 can see where Proko was.

His breath is cut short when a hand grabs the back of his shirt and he's pulled back. Cheng2 fights against Fake Jiang's strength. His feet scrabble for purchase on the dirt, made slick and powdery by the cold. No. He will not be swayed. He fights back against Jiang, who loses his grip. Cheng2 runs. He so close. Jiang grabs at his shirt again. Cheng2 dances out of his way. He throws his weight into his feet. He's almost there when Jiang drags him to the ground. He struggles, turning on his back and kicking at Jiang.

"Are you fucking-" Jiang hisses, pulling Cheng2 up by his arms and slamming him back into the ground. He cocks an arm back. "You know what, I would say I'm sorry for this but I'm really, really-"

 

* * *

 

"-not." Jiang's fist slams into Cheng2's temple. The other boy's head lolls back, unconscious.

Wincing, Jiang shakes his hand out. He was not expecting Cheng2 to go down so easily. Fuck, he's never hit anyone unconscious before, certainly not in one go. He surveys his victim.

Belatedly, he sees the problem. That being, namely, the thirty pounds Cheng2 has on him and the half-mile they've walked up the damn road.

Fuck. He had really not been thinking past waking Cheng2 up and keeping him from unintentional suicide.

Grabbing the back of Cheng2's collar, Jiang begins the long, laborious task of dragging Cheng2's ass down the mountain.


	17. Chapter 17

"What," Skov says when Jiang pulls up, which, granted, they haven't done more than grunt in each other's general directions in, oh, a lifetime, "the fuck. Who is that?"

Since Skov is perfectly capable of using his eyes, Jiang snaps, "Just help me."

"That's Cheng2."

"Uh, yah." Skov's arms are crossed. The look he's giving Jiang you'd think this was something horrible. Since when did he get a moral compass? This isn't even close to the shadiest thing he's ever done. Or did Skov forget his favorite baseball bat? Jiang can remember K borrowing that shit to play Little League with Broadway's ribs. Putting aside the fact that Jiang is doing good well beyond what anyone would expect of him, Broadway's not even in Jiang's trunk. He's in the back. Sure, his hands are tied up but that's so he won't go opening doors and dashing up a hiking trail muttering about how he needs to be up there, which, oh, yeah, he  _totally tried to do_. "He was about to walk off a cliff."

"So you tied him up."

"For his own good, yeah. Christ, Skov, look at him." Jiang feels like he should be yelling. He can't muster the energy. Broadway makes him so  _tired_. "Something's not right."

"Because you're completely okay," Swan mutters. If Jiang were a different kind of person, he'd say, "Hi, Swan, how ya doing? You look like death, as usual". He's Jiang, though, and he is really not here for Swan's attitude. "You can't just kidnap people, Jiang!"

"You can if they're going to hurt themselves. You didn't see him, Swan. Something had him." Jiang looks at Broadway pensively. Nothing in Cheng's lieutenant's eyes says he's listening. He's in another world, one Jiang thinks he might be all too familiar with. "Are you going to help me or not?"

"Help you with what?!" Swan's voice is shrill, his face pale. What the hell is going on with him and Skov? This is nothing.

"Stop it," Skov says, an arm out to block Swan from Jiang's direct line of sight. "This isn't cool, Jiang. You can't kidnap people."  _Do you remember what happened last time_ , his eyes say.

Jiang stares back.  _I do._

"It's for his own good," he says, dropping back to a normal volume.

"The good of a dude you don't even like." Skov sounds dubious.

Wow, what a stunning appraisal of Jiang's character. "Just because I don't like him doesn't mean I'm going to let some ghost murder him!"

That silences them.

Shit. Jiang didn't mean to say that. It rings true, though. Cheng2 kept saying he. _He needs me, he was going to show me something, he's waiting for me._ All muttered, none of it meant for Jiang's ear, yet audible all the same.

Not-Kavinsky was following Jiang around, why wouldn't another ghost fuck with Cheng2 just to make Jiang's life harder? He's becoming a fucking ghost magnet, Jimi's sachet be damned. 

"A ghost?" Swan asks tentatively, as if he's worried for Jiang's health.

There's something else in Skov's eyes. He takes Swan's arm. Swan looks up at him and there's no affection there, no warmth, only a careless vacuity. What they had is dead and gone, has been for months. Jiang, for a brief moment, feels pity for Skov.

"Darling," Skov says to Swan, "could you give Jiang and me a minute? There's something I want to talk to him about."

Swan inclines his head. It could be called a nod. "I'll make Cheng2 comfortable."

"You do that."

Swan helps Cheng2 out of the car and into the dorm. Jiang and Skov watch them with the sort of expectant silence of two people who have something private to discuss. Neither mentions that it's the most emotion either's heard from Swan in months.

"A ghost?" Skov asks when the door swings shut with the click of an automatic lock.

Jiang juts his chin up. "I know what I saw."

"I don't doubt you," Skov replies. "Do you think it could be him?"

"Not a fucking chance."

Skov crosses him arms over his chest. "When did it start?"

The conversation abruptly catches up with Jiang. Skov believes him. Jiang's eyes cut to his companion.

Does Skov believe him? Or is he just humoring him? For Jiang, the supernatural isn't a question of belief as much an awareness but white people can't always see what was right in front of their faces. Skov took to dreaming readily or at least pretended to, had accepted the hundred cars in the fairgrounds, had even driven an Evo, white and with a knife graphic identical to nine others.

Skov's already proven he cares about Jiang, even if Jiang doesn't want him to (because they're not friends, not even a little. Skov is Swan's toy and he's been hanging around long after Swan stopped wanting him and, really, it's time for him to go and he hasn't). He went to Litchfield to talk to Cheng. It did nothing because Cheng knows to wait for his signal but it was a kind gesture all the same. He had tried to help when he didn't have to.

It's so unbearably K-like, the reasoning, not the method, that Jiang can't push him away. He needs Skov's help.

"Couple of months ago. Started right after we buried the last one." The last Proko, he means. There are bodies laid out all over this town. They weren't K's fault. Some attributes couldn't be beaten out of a forgery. Like recklessness.

Or hopelessness.

Jiang takes a breath. "I went to his house."

Skov's expression shifts from neutral to sharp. He rocks forward on the balls of his feet. He's interested.

Jiang doesn't know where to start. He tells Skov about a filled room, all the furniture still in place, how yesterday afternoon, when he went back, there was nothing there. About afternoons with K and long evenings, finding more and more that he believed and then, suddenly, he couldn't anymore.

"We could go back to his house," Skov suggests.

"Why?" The ghost isn't K. It never was. The mansion is meaningless.

"Ghosts don't come from nowhere. There's got to be something there. Something that'll explain this."

Jiang rolls his eyes. There's nothing to explain. "K pulled shit out of his dreams. Ghosts are real. This town is fucked. What more explanation do you need?"

Skov drags his snakebites through his teeth. He shakes his head. "This is a lot to take in. I'm going for a drive. Clear my head."

"Sure, whatever." It makes no difference to Jiang what Skov does.

 

* * *

 

Skov goes to grab a drink at the one corner store open this time of night, then slowly makes his way to the Kavinsky mansion.

Jiang thinks he's got it all figured out. Skov can read between the lines. Something preyed on Jiang's emotions, stunted as they are, and got inside his head. It got inside Cheng2's, too. Only, where Jiang was able to parse reality from dreams, the ghost- and Skov's positive it's the same ghost, what are the chances two separate ghosts go after two Asian kids, that's basic horror movie MO type shit- won't let Cheng2 go.

Skov thought bringing Cheng back into Jiang's life would make things better. It did, to an extent. Jiang's more alert now, certainly more active. But if Jiang's right, and this is an attempt to get at Cheng, then Skov's only done him a disservice.

At least Swan is trying to smooth things over. God only knows Jiang isn't good at diplomacy. It's kind of cute, actually. He's the best liar Skov knows and yet he can't keep from pissing people off for five seconds.

Skov's so occupied with his thoughts, so reliant upon muscle memory to get him where he needs to go, he doesn't realize where he is until he's already there. He looks up at the cookie-cutter, brick and glass building and he forgets how to breathe.

He hasn't been back since it happened. There was no reason to go. Four walls and a roof didn't have the same appeal as an empty dragstrip or a public school parking lot. It was just a place. Staying away so long, though, has rendered it sacred, a testament to a life cut short, though never wasted.

The For Sale sign is starting to look tattered. It pains Skov to see the lawn so immaculate, not a single plastic cup or cigarette butt in view. The ash tray on the steps is gone.

He goes to the side of the house. At least the hand plate is still warm to the touch.

He doesn't know what he was expecting. K's things to still be there. Jiang to be wrong.

The home theater remained. That was it. Only the marketable things left behind. Most likely, if the real estate agents ever sold this place, they would be told this was a plus.

Skov collapses into one of the movie seats. Not the one that plays that obnoxious song. The other one.

This is all that's left? This and a hundred white cars?

He believes Jiang. Of course he does. Today was the most alive he's seen Jiang in ages. He wouldn't tie Cheng2 up for shits and giggles. The day K and Proko (and Skov but really, he didn't do that much) laid into him, Jiang would barely touch Cheng2. The guy disgusted him.

"If you're here," Skov says, looking around the cold, empty home theater, "I'm waiting."

There is no answer. Skov isn't certain he was expecting one.

He stands up. There's nothing here.

He runs his hand over the back of the singing chair just to hear that scrap of tune again. Skov can't even say what song it comes from, only that it's imprinted on the back of his mind, an awful remnant of summers long past.

This whole house is full of ghosts and the only one that matters refuses to show itself.

Skov closes his eyes tight and opens them. The home theater is as empty as ever. Frowning, he crosses his eyes. It's a trick he learned as a kid when optical illusions made his head hurt. You cross your eyes, suddenly the illusion doesn't work so well.

Needless to say, he doesn't expect it to do anything.

 

* * *

 

The room is empty. There's nothing here, just four bare walls and a carpet.

Nothing. Nada.  _Semmi._

Huh, Skov thinks as he suddenly feels the need to sit down right where, seconds earlier, a pool table had been. Jiang wasn't lying. Jiang, who lied about everything, wasn't lying about this.

There is a difference between believing something and seeing it. Or not seeing it, as it were. And, in a moment, Skov's become so accustomed to seeing through the illusion, he has to struggle to see it again.

There's nothing here. But there was.

He sits there, unable to bring the vision back, reeling from what he saw. His heart beats so hard, he feels he is one big, throbbing organ, pumping blood into nothing because there is nothing there. The room is empty. He is a heart in every sense, emotion overpowering him as he tries and fails to bring that image back.

He wipes his eye, his hand trembling, and finds it wet. He stares at the liquid on his fingers, uncomprehending.

Jiang was here, day after day, seeing that. If a momentary glimpse did this to Skov, what kind of pain must he be in?

What joy, too, to see K again in all his glory, a king on his throne, a dreamer in his den. Even if it was false, even if it could never be...

A fierce, irrational jealousy hits Skov. Jiang hid this from them. He couldn't have known it was fake the whole time. How selfish, how self-serving, how-

Cheng2 nearly died tonight, Skov reminds himself, carefully compartmentalizing the strange emotions this place is bringing up. This is an empty room in an empty house. Joseph Kavinsky isn't here. He hasn't been for a long time.

It's as Skov is leaving that his toe scuffs on the carpet. He looks down, realizing why the room smells so sterile.

He crouches down and runs his hand over the new carpeting. There's something under there. Skov pulls his butterfly knife out of his back pocket. Flipping it open, he slices a narrow cut into the carpet and carefully extracts the smooth disc beneath it.

"What  _are_  you?" he muses, turning it over.

 

* * *

 

Jiang's waiting outside the dorm when Skov gets back. He's shivering and blowing on his hands. Great wreaths of warm, white air surround him. Skov supposes it's better, in his mind, than being in Cheng2's presence.

He shows Jiang the object he found. Jiang barely glances at it before chattering, "G-get Lynch. He'll know what that is."

"Do you think that's a good idea?"

Lynch isn't someone Skov has much time for. He's self-important despite having no talents to speak of, only a chance ability he needed to be taught to use. He raced all of them and he couldn't be bothered to show up to either of the funerals. He never even said sorry.

That isn't the only reason Skov doesn't want him involved. Lynch and his friends only help themselves and always at other people's expenses. Who's to say they'll be more likely to help now that Jiang's boytoy's joined them?

Not to mention, after Cheng2 decided to get chatty, Lynch's disinterest in Jiang went from barely rude to hostile. Sometimes, he even pretended Jiang didn't exist when he was standing right in front of him. Oh, the things Skov used to overlook.

He would not overlook them anymore.

"When is anything to do with Lynch a good idea?" Jiang tosses the object back to Skov. "K didn't make that. It-"

"What? Doesn't feel right?" It feels like a fucking live current is what it feels like. Like holding an electric dog collar and treading too near the fence.

"No," Jiang answers simply. "It doesn't."

Skov is quiet for a moment, rubbing his thumb over the object. A bit of pottery, disk-shaped, flat on one side, slightly raised on the other. Unglazed but silky smooth on the curved side, rough on the other where small lines are cut into the clay. There's no telling this has anything to do with their current situation.

"If K didn't, what do you think the chances are Lynch dreamt this?" He's the only one in the game, far as Skov knows.

Jiang dismisses the thought with a vicious sneer. "Lynch doesn't have the imagination to make whatever that is. I've seen what he does. He's got no control."

And this, they've both agreed, is the very definition of control. Skov holds the dream object u to the light. The electric shocks are weaker than they were at the mansion. The battery's dying.

"You know, there's an easier way than dealing with Lynch."

"No," Jiang says immediately.

"That bee of his-"

Jiang glares. It's cute that he thinks one little facial expression is going to deter Skov.

"His mother's a specialist in these things. We'd be much more likely to get the right answer going to her."

"No. Cheng can't get involved in any of this."

"Why not?" Skov asks, even though he knows. Jiang will protect Cheng, just like Skov will protect Swan. The only difference is Swan's mother is a former stripper and Cheng's is a current black market magical curiosities dealer. It's almost as if Lynch isn't needed.

"Because I said so, alright?" Jiang's nostrils flare. "Broadway, me, what do we have in common?"

"Ganseyboy isn't affected," Skov counters. He's used to Jiang's mental leaps. Cheng2 and Jiang don't share much in common- other than being smart, Asian, and Aglionby students, so everything in most people's minds- which makes a ghost targeting both of them unlikely. Jiang thinks it has to do with Cheng. Skov, who's read one too many books on serial killers, can see this going a completely other way.

"Gansey has protection. A whole cadre of fortunetellers. They would have seen this coming. Besides, anyone trying to get to Cheng's mother wouldn't bother with him. He's too high profile."

Jiang doesn't want to ask Cheng for Seondeok's opinion but he thinks he's being used to get to Cheng to get to her. It seems too roundabout for Skov. Why not go after Cheng directly? Why bother with Jiang? The timeframes don't even match up. Jiang and Cheng weren't an item when this started.

"Alright, we'll go to Lynch." Skov sighs. Lynch is, well, he's Lynch. He's the last person Skov would go to for help. "I just want you to know, I don't like this."

Jiang shoves the dream object in his pocket.

"Good thing you don't need to."

 

* * *

 

There's one thing to do before he goes and it isn't pleasant.

Jiang climbs the steps slowly. He lets his chilled hand drag along the railing, its years of paint rough on his fingers. He passes the first floor, takes the steps to the second with its propped open door.

It's warmer up here. Jiang's nose begins to thaw as he walks down the corridor. He trails his fingers on the wall.  _Dynamism, Synergy, Reciprocity._  The next room,  _Compliance_ , belongs to Swan.

With a flick of his wrist, he opens the door. He cuts his eyes at Swan and Cheng2, who are sitting all buddy-buddy on the bed together. Saying nothing, he sits down cross-legged on the other bed. Cheng2's less blank-faced than Swan, so that's an improvement.

Swan abruptly gets up and walks out. It seems ruder than normal with Cheng2 here.

"How are you feeling?" Jiang asks Cheng2. He has manners.

Cheng2 sneers. Jiang wants to laugh. He looks ridiculous.

"Better then?"

Cheng2 doesn't answer. The bruise on his temple is a deep, nasty purple surrounded by splotches of maroon and indigo. It matches nicely to the one settling onto Jiang's knuckles.

"You don't want to talk, fine. I'll wait." Jiang grabs a magazine from off the floor. Jeez, when did Swan turn into such a slob?

He's halfway through it, learning all about Kristen Stewart's and Robert Pattinson's devastating breakup (after distinctly ignoring the article about Paul Walker because, fuck it, some things are too close to home), when Cheng2 decides to speak.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Shoot."

Cheng2 shifts on Swan's bed. He leans forward. "You didn't care when your friends beat me up. Why now?"

If there's one question to be asked, it's what K's reasons were for going after Cheng2. There were so many. Was it because he was Cheng's? Or because Proko strayed?

Or because he was a fucking dick and a half who blabbed shit that didn't need to be said to anyone who could hear?

Jiang looks at Cheng2 coolly. "To be honest, I couldn't give two shits about you as a person. I lost my place at Litchfield because of you."

"You were selling test answers!" Cheng2 answers hotly.

"Test answers." Jiang scrubs a hand over his mouth. "Is that why you started telling everyone I was trans? Or was that just 'cause you hate me?"

Cheng2's mouth opens and closes. "You don't know how sincerely I regret doing that."

"Yeah, it was incredibly fun finding housing after that. And using the bathroom. And fucking existing in this shitty ass school when ninety percent of the boys look at me like I'm either a freak or a fucking  _challenge_." He puts up a hand when Cheng2 starts to speak. "Save it. There's not much I can do with your apology now." Jiang gets up. "If you need anything, Swan'll get it for you. Unlike me, he actually gives a shit about your well-being."

"Where are you going?"

"To find someone who can tell me what this is," Jiang says, flashing a metal object tucked into his palm. "And what that thing wants with  _you_."

 

* * *

 

Jiang isn't stupid. He knows he doesn't have long before someone starts asking where Cheng2 is.

But he won't get Cheng involved. There's too good a chance he and Cheng2 are pawns and Cheng's the prize.

Who then? Koh's right out. He'd never understand, just come barreling in here and bust Cheng2 out. SickSteve and Ryang wouldn't cooperate. Lee-Squared might but he'd hardly be a help.

Jiang calls Rutherford. If there's a voice of reason in that group, he's it.

"Do you know why I'm calling?" Jiang asks.

"Should I?" Rutherford sounds in the throes of sleep. Or maybe he's just relaxed. Hard to tell with him.

"Do you believe in ghosts, Rutherford?"

"I've never had any reason not to." Rutherford's tone changes. "Are you going to tell me what this is about, Jiang, or should I guess?"

Jiang's lips curve upwards. Good, old Rutherford.

"I'm guessing you know precisely why my roommate didn't come home last night. I'm guessing, too, you know where he is right now, considering you haven't called me in quite some time. Two years, is it?"

Jiang's smile has gone from pleased to poisonous. "Your guesses are good but that's all they are."

"Are they now? Where's Cheng2?"

"Safe. Ish. He needs help, Rutherford. From you and me both."

"Where is he, Jiang?"

 

* * *

 

Rutherford doesn't take long to arrive. He comes alone.

"Where is he?" are the first words out of his mouth.

Swan points wordlessly at the bed.

Jiang hates the way they embrace, like Cheng2 is someone worth missing. He leaves, trusting Rutherford, if not Skov and Swan, to keep Cheng2 where he is.

He checks his phone. It's almost four. Lynch'll still be up by the time he gets there. If he's not, Jiang'll find a way to rouse him.

* * *

 

Rutherford knows Cheng2 too well to think he's innocent. Jiang's made a habit of avoiding Cheng2. It's rather impressive, dating Cheng while avoiding Cheng2, and it's telling.

Jiang would not have done this unless he felt he had to.

He checks Cheng2 over for injury. He finds little- a bruise on his temple, scratches and scrapes on his ankles and lower legs, a blood blister on the bottom of his right foot- to his pleasant surprise. Except for the one, these aren't the marks of a beating. A chase, possibly, but Jiang's no runner.

"What happened?" he asks Cheng2, who draws into himself, unwilling to answer.

"Hey, Cheng2," Rutherford says, his voice soft, "I'm not judging. Just tell me what happened."

Cheng2 swallows a few times. His eyes go to the window and the shelf above the other bed. There's no way out of this conversation.

"I'm trying to help you, Cheng2. I need to know what's going on. This has been going on for a while. I want to help you, man, I really do. I just don't know how."

Cheng2 shakes his head. Rutherford resists the urge to sigh.

"He was there," Cheng2 says.

"Who?"

"Prokopenko."

Jiang's words-  _do you believe in ghosts, Rutherford?_ \- echo back to him.

"Ilya Prokopenko?" Rutherford asks, as though there is any other. There was a time when he and Cheng2 were more than friends, less than dating.

"Yeah." Cheng2 looks at him miserably. "He's been visiting me for months. Then he just stopped. Until last night. I dunno, I guess I thought if I followed him, he'd show me something." 

"You were barefoot when Jiang found you."

Cheng2 shrugs. "I didn't feel anything."

Rutherford accepts the answer. Whether Cheng2 really saw a ghost or he's strung out on some hallucinogen, they can deal with that later.

Rutherford lays back on the bed next to Cheng2 and folds his arms under his head. He looks at the shadows on the ceiling and wonders how long it'll be before one of the boys or Mrs. Woo calls him to ask what's going on. Maybe Cheng will call him and Rutherford will get to explain what sweeping irrationality these two have gotten themselves into this time.

Swan's bed is comfortably hard and Cheng2 is more than comfortably warm. Rutherford walks his fingers up Cheng2's arm. Cheng2 barely reacts.

In the last few weeks, Cheng2 has been better, Rutherford has noticed. He's down but in a tolerable, under-the-weather sort. Now, they're right back where they started.

Jiang, on the other hand, has made great improvements, the most notable of them being calling Rutherford and, perhaps even, saving Cheng2's life.

Because that's what this sounds like. Jiang came across Cheng2 by chance and, rather than leaving him for dead as he before, kept him from hypothermia and falling off a cliff. While the decent thing to do, it is not what you would expect from Jiang where Cheng2 is involved.

Which brings into question why that is. Jiang has never felt threatened by Cheng2, as far as Rutherford can tell. Honestly, if it weren't Jiang they were talking about, Jiang with his miniscule fuse and ability to set anyone on edge, Rutherford would think, well.

He'd think Cheng2 was the instigator and Jiang was simply very good at lashing out.

“There is one thing I've always wondered," Rutherford muses aloud. "What did you do to Jiang, Cheng2?”

Cheng2's breath stutters. A chord has been hit. He tries to hold himself together for a moment but it's a clear struggle. He breaks down, eyes turning red and nose beginning to run, and tearfully explains it all.

He explains about his jealousy, how Jiang was always Cheng's favorite, how Cheng never looked his way, how he thought if he brought Jiang down, he could redirect that attention. He didn’t think things would get so bad.

He explains how he lost Prokopenko because of that jealousy because that jealousy came in the form of saying terrible things, of spreading rumors that were true but, in their truth, had the power to hurt. How Prokopenko, just like Cheng, valued Jiang over Cheng2 and how he had thought he would die that day in the junkyard and he would have deserved it. He sobbed as he told Rutherford how he’d wanted so badly for Proko to come back, how happy he’d been when he did. How it didn’t matter that it was in ghost form.

Rutherford listens because that is what he does and he comes to the conclusion, as he always does, that Jiang is a tolerable malignity. Rutherford does not know, if he had Jiang's emotional range, that he wouldn't have kept driving when he saw Cheng2 walking shoeless through the streets.

"Can you get me a Coke?" Cheng2 asks when he’s finished. He’s cried his emotions out while leaving Rutherford to mull over his own. Ah, but if that isn’t Cheng2. "I'm struggling to stay awake here."

"You have cash?" There are vending machines in all of the dorms. Other than one or two gas stations, Henrietta shuts down after nine o'clock.

"I'll pay you back?"

"Scoundrel," Rutherford says, reaching out and ruffling Cheng2's half-feral hair. As much trouble as he is, Cheng2's his roommate and his friend. There isn't even a thought attached to doing these kind of favors. "One or two?"

"One's fine."

Swan's dawdling on the other side of the door. He's leaning against the wall, nails tapping against the decorative paneling. He looks up when Rutherford walks out of the room.

"Will he be okay?" Swan asks. His voice is soft and distant, as if he cares but isn't quite acquainted with human emotion anymore.

"I think so." Rutherford puts a hand on Swan's shoulder. "Thank you, for letting him stay here." 

Swan nods, his face distant. He's not fully present. Another person and Rutherford would call it exhaustion. Another person and Rutherford might care to diagnose it for what it really is.

Grief. Hopelessness. Misery. All the things Rutherford felt the week Cheng2 was in the hospital and they didn't know whether he'd come out.

"I s'pose you want to know why I'm doing this," Swan mumbles.

Not really, no. Rutherford wants to get Cheng2 out of here and back to Litchfield where Mrs. Woo can take over the difficult task of figuring out what to do.

“He and Pr-" Swan chokes on the name. Rutherford waits for him to collect himself. "Proko were friends."

That's not what Rutherford would call it. "I know."

"Jiang, he- he's mad about a lot of things. I'm sorry. We stopped him before he could hurt Cheng2 too bad."

The way Cheng2 told it, Jiang saved his life. Why's Swan lying? Rutherford searches his face. 

"They never got along," Swan continues. "Not that Jiang gets along with anybody." His lips quirk sadly. "Except Proko. Don't worry, we won't come after him. That was K and Jiang. Cheng2 never did anything that bad."

Rutherford thinks then that Swan is kind of a shitty friend. He thinks, even more so, that he, Rutherford, is kind of a shitty person. Because who else is standing here, ready to help Cheng2, knowing exactly what landed him here? Not the fever dream that's a result of whatever drugs he's imbibed but here, in Lafayette Swan's dorm room, with a bruise on his temple and Jiang angry outside. Who else is going to patch Cheng2 up again and reassure him that being a transphobic asshole is in the past and he needs to move forward?

"I'm going to grab him a soda," Rutherford says, looking for an easy way out of this conversation and finding none. "Do you want to come with me? I'm not sure where the vending machines are in this building."

 

* * *

 

Cheng2 waits until he can't hear Rutherford anymore. He gets out of the bed and slips down the hallway, taking the staircase farthest from the vending machines. In his pocket, jangle three sets of keys. He doesn't want anyone following him.

He doesn't live here, so he doesn't know that this is a newer building and the floorplan isn't the same as the ones he's been in.

"Cheng2," Swan says. His lifted eyebrows are almost welcoming.

"You're up," Rutherford adds.

Cheng2 glances at the Cokes dangling from between Rutherford's fingers, then at Rutherford's questioning eyes.

"Cheng2?" Swan asks.

Cheng2 doesn't answer, just looks panicky for a way out of this.

Swan takes a step forward, hands held out in a placating gesture.

"It's going to be alright," he tells Cheng2. "We'll go back to my room and we'll figure this all out."

Cheng2 doesn't think. He needs to get out of here.

He punches Swan. He shoves a fist into small, glass-boned Swan's nose and it is the worst thing he has ever done. Swan's head snaps backwards. He gasps, an awful, thick, choked sound and clutches at his nose. Blood spills between his fingers, bright against his dark skin.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Cheng says, horrified with himself and what he's done. Rutherford's leaning over Swan. He's grabbed a stack of napkins and is trying to staunch the bleeding but it's not stopping and a harsh voice in Cheng2's head is saying, he wasn't there, he never did anything.

"Cheng2," Rutherford says and now he's moving closer. Cheng2 strikes out. Rutherford is thrown bodily into the wall with a force Cheng2 didn't know he had.

Cheng2 stares down at his open, shaking palm in horror.

"I'm sorry," he repeats. "I have to go." Then he turns the other way and runs.

He runs and runs and runs, down the road next to the dorms, up the lazy incline that quickly turns steep, up and up and up until he's right where Proko left him.

 

* * *

 

"Are you really dating Cheng now?"

Two of Jiang's friends are dead, he's fucked Lynch's brother more times than he cares to count, and this is the greeting Lynch goes for?

Then again, Lynch never did have a clue what was going on around him.

"What do you think?" Jiang snaps. The words get twisted in his mouth somehow and come out smugger and less vitriolic than he means. Cheng is privy to a world Lynch is only just starting to recognize exists, let alone understand. Even if Lynch knows nothing of Jiang's affair with his brother, he can't deny Jiang has the upper hand here.

And Jiang is proud. Cheng is amazing. He's sweet and kind, a touch vain, the best sub Jiang could ask for, and an altogether better human being than Lynch could ever hope to be. More than all that, he is  _Jiang's_. There's no lack of pride here.

"I need you to tell me what this is." Jiang pulls Skov's object out of his pocket and holds it out for Lynch and the entirety of his fucking farm to see. God, what the fuck is Lynch doing at a farm? Jiang heard the Lynches had a homestead out in Singers Falls but he thought that was a joke, not a reality. There are cows on the other side of the fence, for crying out loud. Lynch seems not to notice the overpowering smell of shit.

Lynch's blue eyes flick to the disk and back up. "Who says I would know?"

"Proko," Jiang hisses, "was asleep before he hit the wall. You know why."

Lynch doesn't even try to hide his surprise. Jiang rolls his eyes. Does Lynch really think there are any secrets in Henrietta Jiang didn't know? Especially ones involving Jiang's own friends? Or does he not know where Seondeok lay in the Lynch family's web?

Gravel crunches as a Frankensteinian monstrosity of a car rolls up the drive, headlights reflecting off the early morning mist. Lynch's expression is unguarded and sickeningly happy. Parrish.

"Focus, Lynch. Your boyfriend can wait."

Lynch scowls. It's a much more bearable expression.

"I don't know what that is. I've never seen it before."

A car door opens and closes. Parrish's long legs traverse the lawn and take the steps easily.

"Jiang," he says. His wretched accent drags out the syllables torturously, fucks the tone endlessly. It's not a name so much as an approximation of one. "What are you doing here?"

"Parrish," Jiang replies. He's aware his own version of Parrish's name tends too heavy on the r's and he lays on that quirk until Parrish looks uncomfortable. "Skov found something."

"Then why isn't Skov here to show it to us?"

Jiang's cell rings. He holds up a hand, answering his phone only for the chance to show the Lynch-Parrish duo how little he values their time.

"What?"

"So our friend escaped," Skov drawls. "Swiped Swan's keys and everything."

"And you didn't follow him?"

Jiang can feel Skov's indifference through the phone. "He took my keys, too. Then he shoved Rutherford into a wall. It’s a pretty big dent, you should see it." He says all of this without moving a tic above boredom.

If you didn't know Skov, you'd think he was bored. You'd think this was the least interesting thing he'd seen all week, perhaps even all year. You would not guess that something was deadly wrong.

Jiang grits his teeth.

"Did he touch Swan?"

Skov is quiet for a moment. They both know Cheng2's being controlled by external forces. That isn't the question.

"The bleeding's stopped. He's pretty shaken."

Jiang's mouth tightens.

"I'm handing the phone off," Skov says, still carefully calm. There's fumbling. Jiang's protests are ignored.

"Jiang, it's Rutherford."

"What?" Jiang growls. Rutherford was supposed to watch Cheng2. He let him go. Jiang has nothing to say to him.

"Don't hurt him. He does a lot of stupid things but he's not a bad person. It's not Cheng2 in there. You know that."

Jiang can't listen to this. He hangs up. He thrusts the disc at Lynch, who hasn't even tried to hide his eavesdropping. Lynch stares, then slowly takes it. Jiang curls his lip at this display of uselessness.

"If you figure it out, call me. It's important."


	18. Chapter 18

People were not meant to climb the same hill twice in one day, Jiang decides as he wheezes his way up the hard-packed dirt path. He rests his hands on his thighs and bends over to catch his breath, resolutely not acknowledging that years of smoking, binding, and a complete and utter lack of cardiovascular activity have at all helped determine how shitty this day is turning out to be.

He rounds the last bend and spies Cheng2 sitting cross-legged on the cliff’s edge. He is the picture of misery and defeat.

"You," Jiang huffs, "couldn't" -puff- "have picked an easier mountain to climb?"

Cheng2 just stares out at the rising sun.

Oh, fuck this. Jiang sits down next to him, more out of breathlessness than solidarity. _Fuck_ hiking.

The sun’s coming over the horizon now. It casts the valley in shades of red, pink, and gold. The mountains are a haze of bluish-white mist. Soon, the sun will burn it off and the mountains will be blue as far as the eye can see.

There have been a couple of times in Jiang's life when he's been up to see the dawn. Mostly, they’ve been after a long night with a dozen other teenagers at his side, the accomplishment in the staying up rather than the waking. It messes with your sense of time in the best way, seeing the world go from light to dark to light again.

This is different. There's no camaraderie to this morning. It's just Jiang and the last person he wants to be with, and a morning neither of them is enjoying.

Jiang sticks his hands in his armpits to warm them. No matter what time of year, Henrietta is freezing in the mornings and it's December.

Where the fuck are the others? Swan, Jiang knows, has at least another set of keys. Skov Jiang’s _seen_ hotwire a car. Rutherford has a whole collection of backups he can call.

Of course, it's Jiang, the farthest away, who gets here first.

He contemplates pushing Cheng2 over the edge.

"He isn't here," Cheng2 says in a voice so small Jiang’s eyes can’t help sliding over to him.

Jiang unfolds his hands. He leans back on his elbows, resolutely ignoring the dirt and grit digging into his arms. What the fuck is life. He's sitting on a mountainside with the closest thing he has to a mortal enemy and his goal is to keep this guy from getting killed.

"Yeah, well, you can't expect these things to be punctual."

"What things?"

"Ghosts."

And now he's having a heart-to-heart.

Jiang grimaces. "Come on, Broadway, let's get you back to Rutherford."

They take the trail back down. Cheng2's more cooperative this time, which is good, because Jiang does not have it in him to so much as log-roll the dick. Sleep deprivation is making his lack of athleticism (Jiang fights but he fights quick and dirty and often with knives; hiking is a thing for people with a love of nature and an immunity to bugs) even more prominent than usual. The rising sun’s alternately casting long shadows and blinding him through the trees.

Cheng2's tired, too. He's been up only a quarter as long as Jiang and he’s much more inclined to the sports arts, but he's walked and run many more miles than his reluctant companion. Jiang doesn't see what he trips on, just feels a hand reach out and grab his sleeve. He tries to shove Cheng2 away but he's not fast enough. In a fraction of a second he's falling.

The cold, hard-packed dirt acts as a perfect slide, dragging both boys down. Jiang tries to slow their pace. His hands scrabble, trying to find something, anything to stop them. He grabs at dead grass and fallen twigs, catching only scraped knuckles.

Cheng2 reaches out blindly. His hands drag through the dust.

They continue to slide.

Jiang jerks his head behind him. If memory serves- and he's been up this trail twice, of course, memory serves- the trail curves soon and by soon, he means _now_. Jiang does the only thing he can do: he twists a bundle of whitish-brown sedge around his hand and hopes.

It works but the hold is fragile, the plant nearly dead. He knees his way up from the edge, cursing Cheng2 the whole way.

Too late, he remembers that anger isn't in the abstract. He looks back.

Only Cheng2’s shoulders and arms are visible. The rest is over the edge. Cheng2’s barely holding on. He’s inching slowly backwards as Jiang watches, his fingers slipping through fallen pine needles and scruff. There's white all around his eyes.

"Grab something!" Jiang yells.

Cheng2, using all the wisdom of his seventeen years, grabs Jiang's ankle.

 

* * *

 

They go over the edge.

They hit trees before they ever hit the ground. Winter-bare branches scrape at Jiang's face and arms. They snap easily under his slight weight, sending him crashing into another set of branches, these evergreen.

He crashes into the ground. His breath leaves his lungs in an excruciating _whoosh_. He sobs a gasp. Before he can catch his breath, Cheng2 reaches for a tree root, misses, and latches onto Jiang's arm.

They tumble down the slope, hitting every granite rock and jagged root on the way. Dust and dirt and a hundred other horrid things fills Jiang's mouth and nose, making it hard to breathe, let alone see. The world is flashes of light and dirt in his eyelashes. Dead, dry leaves smack him in the face.

If Jiang could breathe, he'd scream at Cheng2 for getting them into this mess. As it is, he's painfully out of breath, rolling down a hillside with the bright sun winking through the treetops, blinding him for no reason at all.

Their descent isn't slowing. The thick underbrush is largely dead leaves and pine needles. It softens their fall but is too slippery to slow it. Catching inspiration, Jiang braces his elbow and shoves it into an exposed patch of dirt. His mouth opens in a silent scream as layers of his skin are scraped away. Cheng2 seems to get what he's doing. He grabs at a rock embedded in the dirt. It rips out of the dirt and falls behind them as they continue their unwanted descent. Jiang's elbow and forearm are scraped raw, caked in dirt and pine needles sticky with sap. His palms, not at all healed, throb.

Cheng2 grabs at a branch. It snaps. He reaches out again- and, goddamn, Jiang wants to tell him to stop grabbing at things- and finds a bit of granite. It proves to be attached to a half-buried cobble. He slows enough to dig his knees in.

Jiang's momentum is broken when he slams sideways into Cheng2's shoulder and chest, earning him a curse from the other boy. Wincing, Cheng2 grabs Jiang’s shirt and pulls him to level ground on the other side of the tree the granite's nestled under.

Jiang chokes and hacks, spitting up a sizable wad of brown mucus. Cheng2, laying on his back, chest heaving, is too exhausted to give him a disgusted look.

"You're welcome," he says when his breathing's slowed.

"Fuck," Jiang wheezes, "you." He blows his nose, bringing up more dusty, dirt-streaked snot.

Cheng2 sits up with a wince. Shading his eyes from the sun, he looks back up the tree-filled slope. Jiang rolls his eyes. There's no way they're getting back up there. He doesn't know what Cheng2's credentials are but Jiang is decidedly _not_ a rock climber.

"Do you have your phone?" Cheng2 asks. "We could call for help."

Jiang, feeling spiteful, tosses his battered, newly shattered phone in Cheng2's direction. It misses Cheng2's massive forehead and lands a few feet down the slope from Cheng2's feet. With care, grabbing hold of the tree's roots, Cheng2 reaches a foot out and grasps it between his toes, using his own tacky blood as a mild adhesive. Jiang is repulsed and he makes sure Cheng2 knows it.

Cheng2 fiddles with the phone for a few minutes.

"No signal," he says.

Jiang is, just, so surprised. No signal in the backend of nowhere? Tell him it ain't so.

Cheng2 tosses the phone back. Jiang catches it with a sneer.

"What do you propose now, asshole?" he asks.

Indignant, Cheng2 retorts, "Hey, this isn't my fault-"

"You _grabbed_ me-"

 

* * *

 

"What, was I just going to _fall_ -"

"Yes," Jiang hisses.

Cheng2 is flabbergasted. Flabbergasted. He was falling! Every instinct in him was screaming grab the nearest thing. So what if it was Jiang? He's readying himself to reply- and, Jesus, someone tell him why it's so hard to get a good reply when it's Jiang he's up against- when something most unexpected happens. A new voice enters the fray.

"You came," it says in a tone half-wonder.

Everything stops. The heat drains from Cheng2's body. The pain fades away. There, standing before him, wreathed in the dawn light, is the only person who matters.

"Proko," he breathes.

"Proko?" Jiang echoes and, for once, his voice isn't acid-drenched.

"I've missed you," Proko says. He leans over him, hands on his knees, perfect as the dawn. "I really have."

A grin spreads across Cheng2's face, as foolish as it is unconscious. He’s always loved Proko's accent with its buzzing s's, curling a's and o's, and thick d's.

"What happened to you?" he asks and it isn't his Proko he asks but this one.

The ghost smiles and raises a finger to his lips. His face is soft against his halo, his lips softer still.

They're lips Cheng2 never got to kiss. That accent, those words, they were long gone by the time Proko let him in.

Cheng2 rises to his feet as Proko walks backwards away from him. The ghost’s hands beckon. _Come with me._

Cheng2 isn't supposed to know. He does but he isn't supposed to.

You don't stay Cheng's friend without learning a few things. You don't look at Koh and pretend his protectiveness is personality and not notice that SickSteve was Matthew Lynch's roommate before his brother decided it was too risky and took him away. No Name Jiang moves from Cheng's side to Kavinsky's to Declan Lynch's bed and Adam Parrish goes untouched when scaffolding breaks. Cheng2 doesn't need anyone to tell him there are no coincidences. It's all connected.

Broadways have a knack for making powerful friends, though friend is not usually what they get called in return. Acquaintance. Assistant. Follower. Always more useful to the one they serve than the other way around, Broadways live to be vital. Cheng2 doesn't know what happened to get Koh sent here but Cheng didn't need a bodyguard before and he barely does now. What he needs is followers. Cheng2 used to think the Vancouver Gang was a trial run for the empire Cheng will have someday. Cheng2 always meant to see to it that he was part of that empire.

He thought Proko was much the same. He'd relished standing at Kavinsky's side as much as Cheng2 did Cheng's.

Cheng2 pushes the branches of a mountain laurel aside. He watches ghost Proko's hips sway, though they don't hold his attention as much as the ghost itself. They must be going to where Kavinsky buried the body. It's the only answer.

Cheng2's pop always said he had an ear for accents. His impressions were solid all around. So when Prokopenko's slid from Ukrainian into solidly movie Russian, Cheng2 noticed. But Prokopenko had started putting action to smiles and Cheng2 wanted to taste those lips so bad. Questioning the change was put into the same corner as questioning Lynch's new pet or Carruthers's empty eyes. Oddities but not curiosities. Some questions were too dangerous to ask.

But this, this accent is right. This must be the real Proko, here and now. This is what Cheng2 is supposed to see.

"I should have told someone," he says, the words coming of their own accord. He should have let _everyone_ know what he knew. Instead, he let Kavinsky get away with it.

The ghost shakes his head and smiles. _It's alright_ , he says without words.

"No, it's not. I should have."

"Follow me," the ghost says. "I have something to show you."

"Is it where they buried you?" It has to be. Why else would they be here, where no one else could hope to find them?

Ilya Prokopenko's ghost, the real one, the one Cheng2 hardly ever knew, just smiles and begins to walk away, his hips rolling just the tiniest bit.

Cheng2 does what he does best: he follows.

 

* * *

 

Jiang has never cared for the woods.

There's a primordial human fear of the unknown. Deep water, dank tunnels, dark alleyways. But while the danger in those is sometimes present, it never leaves Henrietta's woods.

Jiang doesn't know when he first began to fear the woods. It was after the first Proko, that's for sure.

He remembers, he remembers K showing them a grove where the most astounding things could happen. Dread crawled up Jiang’s spine and trickled down the back of his throat as he stood there, in that place. There were white shells there, hundreds of miles from the ocean, and teeming fish whose colors changed as Jiang watched, silver to green to black to blue. The trees grew monstrous there, tall as houses, tall as parking garages. Music played, faint and otherworldly. The place was ancient and it was evil and it hated K very, very much.

Don’t ask how Jiang knows these things. He just does. Maybe it’s like what K could do, maybe it’s just keen observation.

_ Something more. _ That’s what Cheng calls it. Fucking fool wants it.

(Jiang adores him for it.)

Branches sway. Flower petals, ivory and salmon, swirl in the wind. This is not that horrid grove but someplace like it, outside of time. There were no leaves on the trees when they walked in, no warm breeze. Elsewhere, it's bitter December. Here it might be sunny June.

It is not that place but it unsettles Jiang just the same.

Cheng2 walks on steady feet. He's speaking to someone Jiang can't see. He hasn’t noticed the seasons change or the feeling of someone watching them. It’s the trees. The trees are watching them.

There is only one person Jiang knows the trees like and the list of people _that_ person likes is very, very short.

Jiang grabs Cheng2's sleeve.

“We need to go back,” he says.

Cheng2's eyes are fixed on empty air. “I can’t.”

“Really?” But Jiang knows. Stopping Cheng2 from plunging to his death only partially him from his trance. This won’t end until the ghost is satisfied.

“I have to follow,” Cheng2 says. His eyes are glazing over, focusing on something far away. He pulls away from Jiang and continues walking to a destination unknown.

Jiang does what he hasn’t done in six months.

He follows.

 

* * *

 

"Follow me," Proko says. "I have something to show you."

"What is it?" Cheng2 asks. He thinks he knows.

"You'll see."

They've had this conversation before, Cheng2's sure of it. His head's fuzzy but he thinks they might have had it a dozen times walking through these warm woods. It's to be expected. Proko is a broken record, replaying his message. He's been waiting for someone to hear it.

Didn't he come here with someone? He can't remember.

There is only Proko and the goal. Proko's gravesite lies ahead. Kavinsky and his followers covered this up. No one else knew. Only Cheng2 can undo what Kavinsky did and make this right.

He fears, distantly, that Kavinsky’s followers will come after him. They’ll find him here among these trees and add his corpse to Proko’s. And what of it? What does he have so great in his life that doing this, revealing Proko’s truth, is not worth it?

The answer, of course, is nothing.

He feels rather than hears the crunch. Cheng2 looks down. Underneath his foot, there's a circle of pottery neatly broken into a dozen pieces. He stares at it for a moment, then shakes his foot out and continues on.

After a time, he begins to hear what sounds peculiarly like footsteps and heavy breathing.

"Someone's following us," he notes. His voice sounds dreamlike to his ear.

Proko looks over his skewed shoulder. "Are they? I don't see anyone."

And neither does Cheng2. He had thought- but no. no one's there. It is only him, Proko, and the trees.

Wasn't it colder before? Cheng2 feels much warmer than the walking warrants. For a second, he feels a chill rise on his arms. He rubs at his arms, only to find them sun-warmed and misted with sweat. No, it was never cold. He's imagining things.

"How much farther?" he asks Proko.

"Not too far." 

The woods are getting thicker, the sky more obscured. Cheng2’s breath mists in front of him. Something sharp slices his foot.

He notices none of it.

 

* * *

 

The fog's getting worse. It hangs thick in the air, obscuring Jiang's view. He blinks hard but it makes no difference. His eyes ache, not least because he's been wearing his contacts too long.

The chill's settled back in, making the water droplets on Jiang's arms sting. He shivers and swipes his hand over them. Dirt smears and water runs off his fingertips.

He can't barely the ground. Ahead of him, the world is bare tree trunks coming out of pure white.

He's lost sight of Cheng2. He's got to be up ahead. Somewhere. 

The flashlight on his phone does nothing. Jiang curses and puts it away.

It’s as he’s sliding it into his pocket that he sees the pottery.

There's a shard the size of Jiang's palm on the ground. Blood is smeared across it. Jiang picks it up, holding it carefully between his thumb and forefinger. It's half of a scarab beetle, made of baked clay artfully shaped. The blood on it is still fresh, still wet. Jiang blows out a breath. Cheng2 can’t be too far ahead. He searches the ground and sees more blood.

And pottery pieces, oddly enough.

Jiang goes to the next piece. Still holding the shard in one hand, he brushes away the dirt with the other. There's a whole beetle this time, with a pointed tail end and two short antenna sticking out the top.

The hair on Jiang's arms rises. The back of his neck prickles. 

Not scarab.  _Necrophila americana_. The American carrion beetle.

Jiang drops the shard immediately and backs away from the terra cotta insect. This is so much worse than he thought.

He has to find Cheng2.

 

* * *

 

Cheng2’s head swims.

“I got you a book,” he tells the ghost. He frowns. “The other you.”

The ghost’s eyebrow quirks as if to say, _oh, yeah?_

“The Velveteen Rabbit,” Cheng2 says, “your favorite.”

Proko’s face is impassive.

It's not a favorite memory. In fact, it's one Cheng2 would rather forget. He hadn't known then, what kind of damage it would do. He thought it would be a nice gesture, an affirmation of who Prokopenko was.

He'd gotten a copy in Ukrainian. It had taken a bit of searching and Cheng2 was inordinately proud of himself to have found one and in such good condition.

Prokopenko had flipped the pages slowly, studying each one. He’d spread a hand over the illustrations, a puzzled smile on his face.

"This is..."

"It's in Ukrainian," Cheng2 had said excitedly.

Proko had nodded, still looking at the picture. He wasn't as excited as Cheng2 expected him to be. He looked more bemused than anything else.

Suddenly, it hit Cheng2.

"I thought you'd like it," he said, wanting to take the book back and throw it away.

"I do," Proko answered, looking at Cheng2 and not the book.

He'd forgotten how to read his own native language, if he ever learned. Cheng2 hadn't even asked. He’d assumed the accent meant fluency, that his own keen ear meant Proko could read in another script. Mortification flooded Cheng2. He shouldn't have bought this and he definitely shouldn't have brought it. He didn't know anything about Ilya Prokopenko. He just thought-

"I'm sorry. This was stupid." He moved to take the book. Proko snatched it out of his reach, clutching the book to his chest.

"No takebacks." He grinned. "You gave it to me. It's mine now."

Even though Proko accepted the gift, the shame remained. Cheng2 had made an assumption and a poor one. He vowed to do better the next time.

"It was meant for you," Cheng2 says. "You would have liked it."

Proko's eyes show no understanding. Cheng2's cheeks burn.

"Or not."

He falls back into line trudging behind Proko's ghost. He would love that book, Cheng2 knows it. Cheng2's Proko might not have remembered all he once was but he remembered the basics. The Velveteen Rabbit, the toy who became real, that had been a favorite of his.

Where is that book now?


	19. Chapter 19

There’s more pottery the farther Jiang follows Cheng2 and his invisible guide. Jiang keeps stubbing his toes on discs like the one Skov found. The electricity shocks him, keeping him awake. Unpleasant but nowhere near as worrying as what else he finds.

Heaps of terra cotta hands, faces, and arms line the path. The piles are dusted with curled, brown leaves, their disturbing contents only revealed when a a slight wind causes them to skitter. Interspersed along the path are smaller, more broken pieces: fingers and eyes and less identifiable bits.

K and Lynch weren't the only ones who could tap into the ley line. Declan said his father could, though he hinted it was an innate gift, impossible to learn. You either could or you couldn't.

Yet, somehow, Adam Parrish, the scholarship student, the boy who grew up in a _trailer_ , learned to do it. Everyone knew there was something strange about him. In the last few months, he’d only grown stranger. Wilder, some might say. Not in the sense of wild parties but wild as in feral, as in less human.

Cheng says he’s learned to commune with the woods. All Jiang knows or cares is that he’s tapped in, which means that others, less gifted than dreamers, could, too.

This is the work of one such person.

Out here, in the middle of the Henriettan woods, where power and impossibility can be had for anyone who wishes to grab it, someone has built a factory. Jiang has the disquieting certainty that he knows exactly who that person is.

Jiang picks his way carefully, following the clay discs. Cheng's blood is no longer here to guide Jiang, the cut probably long coated in dirt. He has to trust that the pottery and Cheng2 are in the same direction.

From a distance, Jiang spies what looks like an abandoned, abused mannequin just left of the main path. He approaches it to find an androgynous human shape, flat-chested and with genitals smooth as a Ken doll. Its face is smashed in, the nose and half of an eye lying still intact in the cavern of its skull amongst dozens of smaller shards. There’s a hole in its chest.

Jiang shivers and not out of cold.

There’s still no signal on his phone. They can’t be more than two miles from the dorms. They might as well be a state away. Even if someone gets Jiang’s directions right and figures out where he and Cheng2 went over, they’d have to track them down here. The mist is growing. Jiang thinks they’ve been walking parallel to the trail above but he can barely see the sun anymore and time in the woods isn’t like time outside it. Two miles could be ten, could be twenty. Jiang doubts he could actually walk that far but it wouldn’t be the first time he’s unknowingly taken part in the improbable.

Jiang can’t see more than ten feet in front of him. Somewhere up ahead is Cheng2. He has to trust the pottery will show the way.

 

* * *

 

It takes Jiang a depressingly long amount of time to realize what the clay discs with their little electrical charges are. K was never upfront about how he did it. Declan barely knew. Mackey’s no dreamer. She wouldn’t use whatever they had. What she can do is convert the ley line into a usable energy source. These are her adapters and modems.

Jiang whips out his phone. The signal is boosted by whatever grid Mackey’s set down here. It’s not great but it’s enough.

His call is picked up instantly. Jiang skips over pleasantries. 

"Secure Cheng," he says and hangs up. He trusts the lack of information will spur Koh to action.

Jiang scrolls through his contacts. Choosing one, he presses call. The response is slower, the voice on the other end less concerned.

"Is this important, Jiang? I'm a bit busy right now." _I'm not vested in Cheng2's safety_ is what Skov means.

Jiang doesn’t need him to be. Skov will come. Jiang just has to say what he wants to hear.

"I know who's behind this."

"I'm listening."

Talking quietly and furtively, he tells Skov exactly where to find them.


	20. Chapter 20

There is a hole in Skov's heart. A cold wind blows through it. Swan's broken nose, his blood-streaked face, are seared across the screen of Skov's mind, burned in there with a vengeance. Only blood, in much greater quantities than that on Swan's delicate hands tonight, could scour it away.

Jiang needs help. Not all help is so directly delivered. 

Rutherford is a man of caution, Skov less so. He takes point.

Rutherford follows him to Litchfield.

When they arrive, Skov doesn't ask whether he's welcome before shoving his way inside.

"Cheng2's room," he demands, "where is it?"

The Vancouver crowd stares at him blankly. They neither stop him nor answer his question. Mrs. Woo doesn't seem to be in residence or Koh. In point of fact, it's just three boys- SickSteve, Lee-Squared, and Ryang- who sit there still as horror movie dolls, peering soullessly at him with black eyes.

"This way," Rutherford says from behind him. "Upstairs."

 

* * *

 

Anger burns cold in Skov's veins as he tears Cheng2's room apart. He doesn't bother thinking of logical hiding places. Books get swept from shelves, every drawer gets opened, and the bedframes get pulled from the walls. Rutherford stands for a minute, surveying the ongoing destruction, then joins in.

"What are we looking for?" he asks Skovron.

"A clay disc, about this big." Skov makes a small circle with his thumbs and forefingers. "It'll feel electric."

Unbidden, the refrain from the Electric Slide enters Rutherford's brain. It's electric. Boogie woogie woogie.

"And you think it's here?"

"Could be. Could be anywhere in the house."

"Is it this?" Lee-Squared asks. He stands in the doorway, holding up a saucer. His round eyes take in the bedroom, which is now several degrees of magnitude more slovenly than normal. "SickSteve found it in the bathroom."

Skov's eyes bug out.

"Give it to me."

Lee-Squared's eyes slide to Rutherford, who shrugs minusculely and widens his own in return.

"What is it?" Lee-Squared asks.

"I don't know," Skov lies, then picks up his foot and smashes it. "Where's Cheng?"

Rutherford is briefly confused by the question. Then he realizes it must be odd, from Skov's point of view, for Cheng not to be here.

"Koh's gone to find him," Lee-Squared answers.


	21. Chapter 21

Swan stays when Skov and Rutherford go. They didn't ask him to come. He didn't offer.

He fingers the plaster supporting the bridge of his nose. Skov's patched him up, his hands deft and sure, his eyes full of a care Swan can't return. He's wondered before if he ever could.

With steady hands, Swan pulls the book from off the top shelf. It's slightly dusty, in the way of things that have been sitting for a while. He wipes the dust away.

Swan can't read the words on the front cover. It isn't hard to guess what book it is: the illustrations are the same as in the one his mother once read to him.  The Velveteen Rabbit.

It was not one of Swan's favorite childhood stories. He preferred more fantastical tales, witches and princesses and women who saved themselves by being smart and bright and kind. Knights in shining armor, his mother always told him, were hard to find these days.

The spine creaks as he opens it. He flips through the pages. They're well-worn, spotted with stains and smears, even a pansy pressed inside to dry. Swan traces over that pansy. He doesn't remember the day it was placed inside but he can imagine it, fresh as if it just happened.

His breath steady and his hands steadier still, Swan turns back to the inside of the front cover and the sticky note there.

_I thought you'd like this. -Cheng2_

The ring and the chain were easy enough to give back. They spoke to the idea of Ilya Prokopenko, not the reality. The real Proko would have far preferred a nice, pink collar. HE wouldn't have accepted a gift from a potential suitor.

The book is different. Proko loved it, even if he couldn't read it. His grandmama had abandoned him, his family couldn't understand him. He was someone else, though not entirely new, an alien in their son's skin.

Swan is the Skin Horse, the Jiminy Cricket. He is the voice of reason who has failed. The Velveteen Rabbit's dead and Pinocchio, too. Geppetto's offed himself and the Blue Fairy can't be bothered to help.

Why should she? It's all Swan's fault.

Swan was raised in the art of love. It was monetized, weaponized in the hands of his mother but never lost its sanctity. Love was the basis for all good things.

Love made Black Rose's son an accomplice to a crime so strange, so horrid, it had no name.

Call it assisted suicide, if you will.

"There's a word," Proko told Swan as K showed them the Evos and told them what to do. "You have to say it. I can't." He told Swan the word and explained without explaining anything what it did. He never said "take me with him". Swan was too romantic not to understand.

How Proko knew was inconsequential. What mattered was that, when Swan stood over Proko's bed and muttered that garbled word, half-English, half-Bulgarian, the EKG machine went flat. And Proko, the last, if not the first, was gone

This is what Proko would have wanted, Swan told himself. Life without K would be no life at all.

He doesn't believe that anymore.

Swan shuts the book, pressing it together with hands less steady than they were before. He holds it for a moment. Then, with an inhuman scream, he hurls it at the wall. He claws at his neck and arms, scrapes nails over his face, and sobs. Tears well and pour down his cheeks.

He lived for a year with version after version. Sometimes K killed them, sometimes it was something else. They were never right, never good enough.

Except the last one, the one that lay in a hospital bed with only Jiang, Skov, and Swan for visitors. Skov didn't want to be there and Jiang barely did, and Swan, Swan gave up on his best friend and, with one word, unraveled the magic that let him be.


	22. Chapter 22

The pottery pieces are getting larger. They're less damaged and more apt to be in piles, which themselves are increasing in number, feet, hands, even heads. The discs are still underfoot and so too are the carrion beetles. Jiang tries not to step on any of those.

The woods are quiet, only a low, harsh, electrical buzz to be heard. There isn't an animal in sight. Not a single bird flies overhead.

It’s wrong. Woods like these are never empty. They are full of life. Birds flit through the trees, ancient animals low in the distance, and music, uncanny and sylphlike, comes in one ear and not the other. Here, there is only buzzing.

Still, Jiang journeys on.

He finds two more mannequins, both crushed the same way as the first. It only makes him more certain of just whose work this is.

He sees no sign of Cheng2. There’s pottery and there’s woods.

Jiang has to be right.

Up ahead, the trees part in a clearing. It beckons Jiang, a clear, uninterrupted spot of sunlight and soft, green grass. A breeze sweeps over it, making white-topped clover and yellow dandelions sway.

Jiang's breath billows white in front of him. His toes are frozen, his nose numb. He can barely move his fingers. A moment in the sun. Nothing in the world could be so satisfying.

Jiang steps into the glade.

Ropes shoot out of the ground. They wind around Jiang's arms, pulling them tight to his body as he’s dragged to the forest floor. His head slams into the ground, pain blooming in his skull. Jiang, suddenly aware of his situation, begins to fight. More ropes, the ends coming together seamlessly and without knots, wind around his ankles and thread over his mouth, gagging him. Jiang struggles against his bonds, biting and squirming and scratching futilely.

He's dragged through dead leaves and gunk, terra cotta forms passing smoothly beneath him, before being cinched tight against the trunk of a blackgum tree. Pissed, Jiang attacks the rope with his teeth. It's unusually smooth, leaving an oily residue against his lips, and doesn’t break.

That’s when he sees Cheng2 on the other side of the clearing. He’s not alone.

It’s an illusion. It’s all an illusion.

Not-Kavinsky stands in front of Cheng2. They’re talking to each other calmly. Jiang can’t hear the words. He can see the ropes winding up Cheng2’s legs and slithering around his wrists.

The warmth’s left the clearing. There’s no breeze, no clover, no dandelions. There’s only a lone, terra cotta beetle’s wing, the elytrum spread wide, fluttering in the dirt. Jiang's heart begins to race.

Fucked is not a good enough word for what they are if Cheng2 doesn't wake up.

 

* * *

 

"Come with me," Proko's ghost says.

"Aren't we almost there?" Cheng2 asks. _Follow me, come with me._ Proko keeps repeating himself over and over, an unending loop, yet they never seem any closer to their destination, wherever that is.

"Nearly. Just a little bit further."

Cheng2 blinks. His eyesight is playing tricks on him. Proko's hair was never dark brown. And when did he get shades?

He blinks again. Proko’s hair is back to its natural color. There are no shades. But someone's with them.

No one's with them.

He is so tired. Thirty minutes’ sleep and this will all make sense.

“Just a little further,” Proko repeats, a scratched CD.

Are they still walking? Cheng2 feels like he hasn't moved in a long time.

“Broadway,” Jiang says, his voice swimming in and out of Cheng2’s consciousness, Broa-oadway, “it’s not him!” Why’s he shouting? So quiet, too. Whisper-shouting, that’s what that’s called. “She just wants you to think it is!”

She? Who is she? Cheng2 rubs his eyes. He pushes the questions away. He must be tired if his mind is going in this many directions.

“Are we almost there?” he asks Proko. He winces upon hearing his own voice, petulant like a little kid cranky from too much exercise and not enough naps.

“Almost.”

“Wake up, asshole!” Jiang whisper-shouts.

Proko’s face wavers. He seems, for a moment, angry. Then the expression is gone and he’s passively smiling again.

Cheng2’s wrists feel tight. He rubs at them or tries to. His hands don’t seem to want to move right. Ten minutes’ sleep. That would be enough.

“She’s got you right where she wants you! As long as you believe it’s him, she’s got you!”

“Shut up,” Proko snarls, rounding on Jiang.

 

* * *

 

“Shut up,” Not-Kavinsky snaps. His face is a mess of fury and designer shades. He thinks anger will work on Jiang? The real Kavinsky didn’t scare him.

Jiang sneers. “Let him go. Tell me what you want and I’ll do it but let him go.”

“Jiang, Jiang, Jiang,” the apparition croons, switching tactics. He crouches down in front of him. Placing a cool hand on Jiang’s cheek, he grips him by the jaw hard. “Is that how you treat your friend?”

Jiang tries to bite his hand, then settles for spitting on his shades. He misses but it’s about the effort, not the execution.

“Give it up,” he says. Not-Kavinsky squeezes his jaw. Jiang _feels_ his bones creak. “Your games have gone on long enough. Let him go.”

Not-Kavinsky pretends to consider. “Hmm. No.”

“People are coming for us. You won’t last a second once they get here.” Jiang’s bluffing and badly. The only person he can hope to count on is Skov and even his usefulness is suspect. This is Cheng2. Lynch and Parris won’t turn out for this.

“I’ll last long enough. Don’t worry- I won’t hurt him too much.” He smiles back at Cheng2, who still hasn’t snapped out of it. He’s staring at them with that same stupid look of awe.

Jiang’s stomach curdles. His eyelids drop.

“What do you want,” he asks in his coldest possible voice, “with him?”

Not-Kavinsky’s teeth glitter. “Don’t play coy, Jiang. You know what I want.”

“I promise you, I don’t.”

Not-Kavinsky lets go of Jiang’s jaw. He straightens up. “Don’t play. You won’t win against me when it comes to games.” He gestures to Cheng2. “I’ve got what I want. You’re just collateral.”

“I wouldn’t be very good collateral.”

Not-Kavinsky kicks him in the face. Jiang moves just in time for it to hit him on the side of his mouth and not his front teeth. He hisses but he’s no stranger to pain.

“You’re noisy. Be a dear and shut up, will you?”

 

* * *

 

“Cheng2,” Proko says.

Cheng2 lifts his head, eyes bleary. He feels drugged or like he’s waking from a bad night out.

He sees Jiang (when he’d get here?) tied to a tree, the left corner of his mouth a brilliant mottled red. A movement of his eyes tries to convey a message Cheng2 fails to understand.

“Are we here?” Cheng2 asks Proko. He shakes his head, trying to clear the fog. He only succeeds in making his burgeoning headache worse.

“Yes.” Proko smiles softly. It’s not as reassuring as it was last night. Now it only serves to remind Cheng2 of the gulf between his Proko and this one.

The ghost offers Cheng2 a hand.

“Come on,” he says. “It’s just over there.”

“Don’t follow him,” Jiang snaps. The bruise on his mouth looks too fresh to have been from the fall.

“Come on,” Proko says, placing a cool hand on the small of Cheng2’s back. “Don’t mind Jiang.”

“What happened to his face?” Cheng2 asks as they walk away from the glade, deeper into the woods.

Proko’s smile takes on a sharp edge.

“He didn’t want you to see what you’re about to.”

 

* * *

 

The second Cheng2 disappears, Jiang starts working to free himself. The oiliness gave it away. The tightness of the ropes is just another illusion, if there are any bonds at all. As he works, he checks the trees for cameras and movement.

His phone rings, horrifically loud in the empty glade. It's a local area number. Pressing it quickly to his ear, Jiang answers.

"Jiang."

Jiang nearly chokes under the weight of Cheng's voice. How dare she, how-

"Sweetness."

"What," Jiang gasps, searching for words, hoping, praying that this is one of the Vancouver crowd's number and not a trick, that Cheng is _safe_ , "did your mother have a vision?"

"Tell him it's not the third sleeper," Parrish says from somewhere in the background. Jiang's eyebrows fly up, then drop. His gaze sharpens as the grip of panic loosens. Parrish is not safety and yet, in this instance, he might be. "But it's also not a ghost."

Jiang gathered that himself.

"You weren't supposed to get involved," Jiang tells Cheng.

"You should have more trust in me than that."

"It's not about trust. I didn't want you to get hurt."

"I know, sweetness." How is it Cheng can tear down Jiang's defenses so easily? "There's a demon after you and Cheng2. SickSteve found a disc in Cheng2’s room like the one you brought Ronan."

"He's calling it a demon but it isn't." Jiang can hear the frown in Parrish's voice. "It isn't connected to the third sleeper," Parrish continues. Jiang doesn't know what that is. "I don't know what it is. Technology of some sort."

"It is not like RoboBee," Cheng adds. It's not a forgery. Jiang knows this. He knows all of this. Cheng called him to have their possible last conversation be this? No, no, it can’t end like this. "Jiang, I-"

It hurts too much to hear him speak.

Jiang cuts him off. "I don't want you getting involved."

"I already am."

God, does he know what his words do to Jiang? Jiang needs him to be safe, more than anything. The list of people who would hurt him to get to his mother is endless and Jiang only knows the big players.

"Stay where you are," Jiang says. He puts the steel into his voice Henry loves in bed and will listen to outside of it. He's weak for that shit. He's so weak. It's why he needs to be protected. "If Koh’s not with you, you don’t do anything, you hear me?” Cheng murmurs his assent. Jiang can hardly breathe hearing his voice. Every second she overhears ups the possibility she figures it out. “Let me talk to Parrish."

Cheng hands the phone over. Jiang hears the muttering in the background, the _why are we doing this, this doesn't involve us_. Lynch's friends are as selfish as he is.

In a way, that's good. They won't try to find him.

"Yes?"

"Is Cheng listening?"

There's a pause.

"No."

"Good. I need you to send a message. Tell Gansey," Jiang licks his lips. "Tell Gansey, if something happens to me and Broadway, to get Koh. He'll know what to do."

"What are you going to do?" Parrish intones. This means nothing to him. He isn't invested. Good

"I have an idea who might be behind this. If I'm right, you can't let Cheng get involved." Jiang's eyes slide closed. "He's what they want."

As Jiang presses end call, the sky turns white. Not the white of encroaching mist but the white cloud cover of impending snow. Sap the color of blood runs down the trees. A howl more wind than wolf pierces the silence, turning Jiang's veins to ice.

Cheng2's figured it out.

"Where are you?" Jiang asks, baring a grin he doesn’t feel. None of this is real. The illusions can’t hurt him too badly if he refuses to believe them. "Show yourself."

A form flickers in and out. It solidifies into a boyish shape replete with white sunglasses and a dingy tank. Not-Kavinsky.

Jiang sneers.

"Your true self."

The wind roars, stirring up dirt and dead leaves. It sweeps through the glade, a miniature tornado disturbing everything in its path. Cheng2 stares, eyes wide. He doesn't crouch down, doesn't even move.

Jiang doesn't have the luxury of being afraid. And he doesn't think Cheng2 is. Whatever he’s seeing, it’s not the same as Jiang.

The dirt settles, leaves falling in a graceful spiral.

"Fuck this shit," Jiang snaps. "I'm not scared of you! You don't fool me. You never did!"

An invisible force slams him back against an oak tree. The breath is forced from his lungs and it only serves to infuriate him.

"You're a fucking joke, you know that? Just a fucking bullshit bit-"

A blow across his cheek snaps his head to the side.

"You can't even hit like him," Jiang sneers. "You punkass fake."

The retribution is instant. Hot air and ash fills Jiang's throats. If it reaches his lungs, they'll be scorched. Jiang closes his throat and prays he has enough breath.

The air clears.

He coughs and gasps at the same time and has to cough again. He hacks and spits on the ground, then wipes his mouth.

"Broadway," he groans. "Get out of your head, man. This isn't real."

Cheng2 turns to look at him. He's out of it, eyes glazed over again. Fuck. When will the bitch let him go?

"Wake up," Jiang says. "She needs you to believe it's Proko."

_Hurry your ass up, Skov._

"What does she want from you? Think, Broadway. You know it’s not him!" Jiang's throat protests every word. "Broadway! What the hell does she want from you?"

 

* * *

 

"...the hell does she want from you?"

Is Jiang here? That's his voice. Rough and raspy, just this side of hoarse. Like he gargled glass and now his throat is a mess of scar tissue.

 _Be nice,_  Rutherford would say. _You don't know his life._

No one does.

"Broadway!"

Jiang coughs. It's an awful, gasping, metallic sound, Jiang's lungs being scraped clean.

"Broadway!"

What does Jiang want?

"Look at me," Proko says, only he's wavering, form shifting from solid to transparent, like the wind might shift and blow him away.

For a second, it shifts and Cheng2 sees a clay statue with symbols scratched into its forehead.

Oh.

The statue looks at him, startled that he can see it. Lightning cracks the sky. Cheng2 looks up, thunder rumbling in his veins.

When he looks down, the statue and Proko are gone.

 

* * *

 

Seondeok has always been careful to keep her son a secret. An informant, just one part-Korean kid in a town dozens passed through over the years. He had been found before. It would hurt her pride too much for him to be found again. The Vancouver crowd is personable enough, spread through campus enough, to obscure the connection. Is her son brash SickSteve or quiet Lee-Squared? Is he Ryang who could never keep his temper or Rutherford who could never rise to the occasion?

Clever, clever.

In the end, the enemy was too cautious. She fell for the ruse that wasn't a ruse at all. Cheng2's name is organic, the product of schoolboy logic, not an attempt at dissembling.

Jiang should have seen it sooner. But then, so should've she.

They call her Mackey. No first name, no country of origin. No one's ever seen her face or met her other than via proxy.

Because that's what Mackey does. Proxies.

Homemade, home _crafted_ proxies.

Her "son" doesn't have her name but that doesn't make him any less dangerous. They'd called K an upstart, too new to the game, too brash. These things were to be done under the table, not out in the open.

Jiang thought they'd drawn the attention away from Cheng. Koh had to be brought in but Declan Lynch discouraged too much attention. Until his face got trashed and the Greenmantles came to town.

Jiang stomps to the other side of the clearing. He grabs Cheng2's shirt.

"Listen to me," he says in a clipped undertone. "And listen carefully. Your mother's work name is Seondeok. You're her middle son. When you were little, three men kidnapped you for ransom because of a toy your mother gave you. Do you know remember what that toy was?"

Cheng2's head visibly spins. "RoboBee."

Jiang nods. "Exactly. You don't have this toy on you because you got it when you were a kid and you're way too old to be carrying toys around now. Do you understand?"

Cheng2 clearly does not. "Yes.”

"The man who made that toy is dead. Two of the people who wanted that toy are dead. Are you still following?"

"This is about-"

Jiang's tone sharpens. Mackey’s disappeared. She’ll be back, if she’s not hiding just out of sight, listening. "Don't say his name. If you care about him and I know you do, you won't say a fucking thing."

Cheng's face darkens. Spite fills his eyes.

"You're not good enough for him."

Jiang laughs, a hoarse, humorless sound. "If I valued your opinion, I'd be hurt. He isn't who he lets people think he is. You don't know his family; you don't know him."

"And you do?"

"More than most." Some of the meanness edges out of Jiang's voice when he adds, "He's trying to protect you. There are things you don't want to know about this town."

Cheng2 has to know Cheng's not normal. Normal people don't have teenage bodyguards who could act as a rough body double in a pinch. 

"You just need to keep it up until Skov comes. Do it for him. You have a habit," Jiang says, "of giving your heart to things you don't understand. You think you want to be part of his world. This is it. Remember: what matters is who your mother is, not you."

Jiang can practically see the wheels turning in Cheng2’s brain.

He cannot be this dense. Pretend to be Henry Cheng but don't pretend to be him. The details aren't important, only the association. His identity's been mistaken. It is critical Cheng2 keep it that way.

“If we don't get out of here,” Cheng2 says finally, his words slow and considered, “I want you to know I didn't tell people because I wanted to hurt you. I don't know what I was thinking. It didn't seem like that big of a deal to me, I guess. When I figured it out, it was too late.”

There is a blankness that descends when someone with power over you asks them impossible. Your body's partially shutting down, taking you back to a bare bones, emotionless state, both to protect itself and to keep the rest of you from doing something irredeemably stupid.

Normally, Jiang bypasses this state completely and goes straight for the anger. For Cheng's sake, he can't.

The sad part is Cheng2 really does mean it. Words spew from his mouth without his brain ever seeing them. Intentional or not, he did what he did and that's that.

“Do you forgive me?”

 _Will you forgive me_ would be a better way of phrasing it. Cheng2 is atrocious with words.

“You're understood,” Jiang says, “not forgiven.”

He's done with this conversation. The enemy is waiting and watching. Jiang whips around, looking out into the trees circling the glade. 

"Carruthers, where the fuck are you? I know your spineless ass is around here somewhere."

"Very good," Tad Carruthers says, stepping out from behind the trees as though he had always been there. He’s probably been standing next to them the whole time. Mackey does love her illusions. Oh, how she had hated Proko. She was supposed to have the market on automatons.

"I want to talk to your mother."

“Why?”

“How about because I just walked through a damn forest for her crusty ass?” Jiang is not in the mood for bullshit. He’s got ten different bruises all over his body, he and Parrish are on speaking terms, and Cheng2 is standing next to him. Not a damn one of these is an optimal situation.

The voice that comes from Carruthers mouth is two octaves higher and decades older.

"A bit lacking in manners, aren’t we, dear? I did wonder when one of Xi’s brood would show their face."

"I'm not Xi's son."

"No," Mackey says slowly. "You're not much of a son, are you?"

"Fuck you, bitch."

Mackey inclines Carruthers’ head. "I think I would rather toy with your boyfriend. I didn't expect him to be so attached to your friend. But then you do like to share. I wonder how Seondeok feels about that."

Never say Jiang doesn’t react quickly. He bares his teeth. "You touch Henry and I'll expose you. There's a new king in Henrietta. How do you think he’ll like you messing with his valley?”

Mackey's grey eyes look out from Carruthers' sockets. It’s a nasty trick, putting those old, yellowed eyes in such a youthful face. Why she bothers, when Carruthers is an illusion, too, is beyond Jiang.

Who was it who figured it out first? It couldn't have been Skov. Maybe Swan. He was always the most social of them.

Carruthers isn't human. He never has been. He's a clay shell remotely controlled by his creator, who no one's ever met. Until today, as far as anyone knew, he was the only successful one she ever made.

A golem. Skov was the one to sort out the specifics. Or so he says. Skov’s not known for his truthfulness.

Whichever one of them figured it out, Skov had the story to go with it:

Life is not an easy thing to create. But, through arcane arts, great rabbis could learn to grant life to a creature of clay or wood and force it to be their slave. It would work for six days and rest on the seventh. If the rabbi forgot to remove the paper from its mouth before the Sabbath, the golem would go berserk.

You could tell with Carruthers, Skov added dryly, because he always smelled like clay.

He didn't consider it worth worrying about. Since, at the time of Skov’s retelling, Jiang was smoking pot an eye-searing pink and brilliant yellow smoke was flowing out of his nose, he didn't consider it a threat, either.

That was years ago. Jiang should have recognized it when Skov brought the pottery back from the mansion. K would have. K would have known instantly and then he would have fucked Mackey up for doing this. Jiang wouldn’t have even had to say anything because Mackey was a competitor and Cheng was Jiang's.

But K isn't here and Proko isn't either and Jiang is relying on Skov of all people because Swan can’t be trusted to do anything anymore.

Mackey titters. "This has nothing to do with _him_. Why should an unemployed assassin concern himself with us? Now, where is that artifact of Lynch's, hmm?"

Cheng2's eyes are glazing over again. Jiang wants to knock him unconscious and be over with it. He suspects that might arouse some suspicion, though.

"It's not here,” Jiang replies. “His mother has it."

"Come now, boy, do you think I'm that naive? It's here."

Jiang prays that Cheng didn't send RoboBee after them. He curses Skov for not hurrying.

"Try again."

Mackey tosses Carruthers' head. For a second, his bangs sweep away from his forehead, revealing letters in a script Jiang recognizes but can’t read. "This is tiresome, Xi child."

"I told you, I'm not related to him."

"Please. You look just like him."

There's no real response to that. Jiang's eyes slide towards Cheng2 again. He looks no better. 

That's the problem with Mackey. All she does is multitask.

 

* * *

 

Cheng2 hears the words but all he sees is Proko. Anger settles deep in his chest. Jiang's words are clicking, rearranging to form a cloudy picture. Proko’s changing hair, the clay statue, Jiang’s urging to _wake up_.

“Who are you?” Cheng2 asks. The image before him is perfect, the accent flawless. “You’re not Proko.”

"Of course, I am" comes the answer. But no, it’s not the real answer. The real Proko wouldn’t toy with Cheng2. He wouldn’t drag someone he barely knew through the woods and he certainly wouldn’t beat up his own friend. Cheng2 knows they weren’t just friends, either.

Jiang wouldn’t have murdered Proko. He wouldn’t have covered up his death. That’s what Cheng2’s Proko was so upset about- Kavinsky _didn’t_ care about him like he used to, Jiang _didn’t_ want anything to do with him. Not because of guilt but because he wasn’t right.

Whoever killed Proko and wherever he was buried, the answers aren’t here. Cheng2 won’t be a hero today.

“Why?” Cheng2 asks. “Why do this? What did I ever do to you?”

The smile on Proko’s face vanishes. Amused contempt takes its place.

“Does your mother know she’s bred such an idiotic son? I’ll have to tell her. You are by far the stupidest child I have ever met.”

Jiang’s harsh laughter rings out. A switchblade flicks open from his palm. Light glints off its rainbow edge, grounding Cheng2 in the worst way. Joseph Kavinsky almost severed his left pinky sawing back and forth with that blade while Skov held Cheng2 down on that day in the junkyard Cheng2 will never forget.

“And who is his mother, Mackey?” Jiang asks.

Proko’s sneer twists past human proportions. Mackey. Cheng2 turns the name over in his mind. This is Mackey's sneer.

“Let's not play games." The thing wearing Proko's face is suddenly at Cheng2's side. Its hand touches his cheek. "You mother locked me out. I’ve been trying for years to get Niall Lynch to sell me his goods and your mother convinced Lynch I was unreliable.”

Jiang rolls his eyes.

“Niall Lynch is dead.”

Mackey waves him off.

“Lynch promised me the bee. He found it just for me, you know. He knew someone. That bee was their life’s work.” Mackey’s lip curls. “I was going to destroy it. But she convinced him to sell it to her first. I should have chastised him for that.” She says chastise as if she means an entirely different word.

“And then _you_ thwarted me,” she says, turning to point to Jiang. “Both of you, so sentimental about an automaton. All you had to do was hand him over. He wasn’t even that well made.”

“Better than you could do,” Jiang mutters.

“In some ways, at the time. And now he’s dead. So so much for that.”

Cheng2 punches her in the face.

He doesn’t understand everything but he understands enough. Proko isn’t here and never was. He’s been led into a secluded part of the woods by a woman Jiang finds threatening.

And yet, the only words he can grind out, wetness gathering at the corners of his eyes, are “Fuck you for pretending to be him.” He lashes out, kicking at Mackey’s prone form again and again and again.

“Broadway,” Jiang says, “he’s gone.”

A human-shaped log rests where Mackey was. A trick. Mackey has fled for now but he's still out there, watching them from a safe place.

A soft sound, like the flapping of wings, fills the air. Jiang’s face drains of blood.

“Run,” he says.

 

* * *

 

They race through the trees.

Terra cotta beetles swarm behind them. Unlike Carruthers, they're not an illusion. That makes them all the more dangerous. Mackey’s pets, they’ll tear into human flesh like it’s nothing. Jiang saw it happen when Kavinsky refused to hand the third forgery over. They stripped him to the bone, these piranhas of the air, and only left when they had sucked the marrow out.

Half of Jiang wants to throw Cheng2 to them. It’d take weeks, possibly months for Seondeok to admit Mackey’d gotten the wrong boy. By then, Jiang could have Cheng far away from Henrietta.

Tempting as it is, Cheng would never forgive him if he did that.

The beetles chitter as they draw closer. It sounds like robotic laughter.

Witch, Jiang needs a witch. He fishes in his pocket for his phone. His hands find Jimi’s satchel instead. He throws it aside. No wonder it hadn’t worked.

Jiang slips and skithers on the underbrush. There’s nowhere to go, nothing to save them.

The beetles are closing in. The third forgery’s skinless face flashes across Jiang’s mind, his mouth opening and closing as he tried to scream, his voice box already gone.

The chittering is deafening. It's underlaid with ominous buzzing and insectoid hisses, both sounds growing, wings beating, beetles charging closer. Cheng2 yells in terror.

Jiang dives to the ground. He covers his head. If he’s going to die today, it will be with a shred of self-preservation.

He waits for the end.

A whisper of voices, completely, utterly inhuman, filters through the cacophony.

And then.

Silence.

The beetles don’t come. An eternity passes and no mandibles tear at his skin, no terra cotta bodies alight on his skin. Jiang's skin prickles. He stays huddled where he is. Eons pass. Ice caps melt and volcanoes erupt. The sea rises a hundred feet, subsuming all, and Jiang remains where he is, one small, human figure, waiting to learn what it is to be eaten alive.

Still, the beetles do not come. Slowly, with a cautiousness alien to him, Jiang lowers his arms.

Trapped between a wall of interlocking tree branches not ten feet in front of him, reddish-brown elytra and wings move weakly. The net around them constrict visibly. Terra cotta voices screech as bodies are pressed so tightly they threaten to tear apart under a magic much older than they.

A boy stands before the net of vegetation.

 _Magi,_  the woods whisper. The beetles scream as they are crushed completely, pieces falling to the ground. Chains of grass rise up to drag them deep into the earth.  _Magi nostra venerit_.

Adam Parrish has saved them.


	23. Chapter 23

If Skov’s eyes are a brilliant blue, Parrish’s are as plain as dirt. Gansey's magician's charm is in his inhumanity, not his prettiness.

Jiang stands up. Cheng2 follows his lead. The slight tremble in Jiang's legs is echoed throughout Broadway's whole body.

“Tell me you came alone.”

“Almost,” Parrish says. His gaze is unblinking, as though even that is too human for him.

“I came to the mountain alone. They just happened to have the same destination.”

“It seemed smart to follow him,” Skov says, appearing with a hunting rifle strapped to his back. A man as gray as Parrish is brown comes to stand next to him. A muscle in Skov’s jaw twitches.

“Cheng2,” Rutherford says. He rushes to Cheng2’s side. He pulls a first aid kit out of his backpack and begins wiping the soles of Cheng2’s feet with alcohol wipes.

“Who’s watching Cheng?” Jiang asks, watching them disinterestedly.

“He’s safe,” Parrish replies. A non-answer. His attitude is respectable, if dickish. The truth, once Jiang's put his...concern, into perspective is Koh's got this as handled as any of them. Mackey still thinks Broadway's Cheng, which means she won't be looking wherever Koh's stashed Cheng or rather, wherever Cheng's insisted Koh let him be. If Cheng's not safe with a tatted H.S.S. Mob member, well, no, Jiang won't think of it. “This is Dean. Blue's aunt sent him. She thought you could use some help.”

He says this as if Jiang is supposed to know who Blue is. He does but that is inconsequential. She isn't part of Jiang's world and Jiang isn't part of hers and yet she is part of Parrish's and Henry's- Cheng, his name's Cheng, out here, Jiang can't afford to be sentimental- just as she is part of this man's.

Word gets around. A man driving in K’s old car, in a dream that was a gift to someone as undeserving as Lynch. It stirs up trouble. It makes people think K’s not quite out of the game.

It makes people like Jiang believe the dead walk among the living.

“You can call me the Gray Man,” the man says. 

Or Jiang can call him nothing.

“It’s Mackey,” Jiang tells them. He's not in the mood to explain. If they can't follow his words, more's the better. The only useful people are Skov and Parrish. “She thinks Cheng2 is Cheng.” Cheng2's face turns the color of rice porridge. Jiang's irritation flares. The idiot should've figured it out by now. “And she's not my biggest fan so that little show-" he points at Parrish's knee-weakening creation; God, he hadn't even broken a sweat- "isn't going to stop her." Jiang's lips tighten minutely. These words he says directly to Skov. “Carruthers is here.”

“There’s an unnatural presence in the forest,” Parrish says.

“That’d be Carruthers.”

Skov crooks a loose finger. Jiang steps aside with him.

“You’re sure Mackey’s the one behind this?” Skov asks.

"The clay, the beetles. It's all her."

"The ghosts, too?" Jiang should be insulted. Skov’s eyes are the blue of pure glacial ice and just as cold. Skov’s in. Just for what Cheng2 did to Swan, he’s in.

“She's good at what she does, Skov," is the only explanation Jiang will give. He won't admit he was wrong, that there was no ghost, that he was fooled by a woman so convoluted and dangerous she created a nest in the mountains and not a single person knew about it. She is what she is, a trickster god with only the possibility of a human form. There is no shame in being fooled by Mackey. "You told me once you knew how to kill a golem. Do you still remember?”

Skov's voice is deadly calm when he says yes.

 

* * *

 

Jiang remembers now. It was K who figured out Carruthers wasn't real. He was so smug about it, crowing about his creative prowess. Carruthers was Mackey's main spy; he wasn't her only one. Word got back to her. That's how she found out about Proko.

K had always thought her inconsequential. He'd laughed when the beetles stripped away at the forgery. As muscle strands and fascia disappeared under their ravenous mouths, he'd declared that it was nothing, a minor setback. He could always make another.

It was just a forgery.

A flesh-and-blood forgery that died in the most helpless, hideous excruciating agony as his creator laughed and laughed and laughed.

"I'm not here to help," Parrish announces, bored with this conversation and their company. "There are things here that shouldn't be. I'm going to get rid of them. Then I'm going to go."

He's not a hero and neither are they. Someone has to take care of the beast and someone its aftermaths. Parrish will help. He just won't help them.

Adam Parrish is not the most selfish person Jiang knows.

"Fine," Jiang says. Even he hears how little testiness is in his voice. "Stay out of our way."

"I plan to."

"And you. Protect him,” Jiang says to the gray, lowercase, man. "Take him back to Litchfield."

“Why?” is the question he gets in return. “From what I gather, you two aren’t friends?”

Jiang has no time for this. The gray man was good at his old job. When he proves he's proficient at this one, Jiang will think about respecting him.

“Because that’s what it means to rule the valley.”

Not waiting for a response, Jiang sets off. Skov offers him a Nutrigrain bar. Jiang takes it, chews and swallows. It tastes sour on his tongue.

Parrish will come behind them and destroy the discs. Their job is to find Carruthers. He couldn’t have gone far. They’ll flush him out and Skov will take care of the rest.

After all, Jiang can’t read Hebrew.

He hisses and slaps the back of his neck. His hand comes away slick with blood.

“There!” he says, pointing at the reddish-brown beetle circling overhead.

Skov takes it down easy as shooting skeet. The gunshot rings loud in the woods.

Jiang doesn’t thank him and Skov doesn’t ask him to. There are enough debts, paid and unpaid between them.

They walk like that, Jiang drifting in and out in the way of the sleep-deprived, jerking away whenever he encounters branches or tree trunks unwilling to move out of his way. Jiang can’t tell whether they’re trying to track Carruthers or if Skov’s just hoping they’ll run into him. Either way, Mackey knows they’re in the woods. She’ll come after them or the gray man soon enough.

 

* * *

 

The Gray Man takes the boys. They beat a hasty retreat back to his car. The Korean boy's face turns even more ashen when he sees it. The Gray Man elects not to ask. He herds the two inside. He trusts Adam to manage himself.

Cheng2, as the black boy calls his friend, recovers with a bit of illicit whiskey. He's the chatty type, quick to tell the Gray Man all about his encounter with Mackey. The Gray Man plans to drop them off at Litchfield House. He'll grab a bit of tea with the landlady, who Seondeok obliged him to meet when he announced his intentions on the valley, and then head off to have a little chat with Mackey about acceptable behavior in his jurisdiction.

He’s pulling out of the clearing where he parked his car when he sees the strangest thing in the distance. A dust cloud, rumbling and roiling like the angriest of tumbleweeds, heading straight for them.

In his spare time, the Gray Man has found out a great many things about his new vehicle. For example, that no matter what he does, it smells faintly of burning rubber and jet fuel. Also, that its speed capabilities far exceed the standard specs for a 2014 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution GSR. For example, it can go from 0 to 60 in .5 seconds.

It is an experience the Gray Man has tried to avoid since first accidentally experiencing. He feels no such compulsion now.

They barrel though the grass, zooming far ahead of the dust cloud. The black boy’s knuckles go white. Cheng2 looks equal parts delighted and about to vomit. The Gray Man discretely rolls down his window.

He charges through a gap in the trees. It’s not a dozen yards to the road. The car rattles and shakes as they hit fallen branches and rocks. The Gray Man glances in his rearview mirror. The dust cloud’s not able to keep up.

He hits the rise up to the road and jerks a sharp right to get them straight. Not taking any chances, he presses his foot to the floor. The back wheels skid on gravel for a second before catching.

Back roads aren’t meant to be taken this fast. He has to drop down to 55 to keep from swinging them off the road. The car’s itching for him to go faster. That’s another thing- the car _pulls_ in a way no other car the Gray Man’s driven has. It wants him to go down that hill at 70. It wants him to fly over that embankment. Anything above 65 and the car begs for their mutual destruction.

Not today. He holds the beast in line. 40 is the posted max on these roads; he’ll go no more than 50. Not least because he doesn’t want to be cleaning teenage boy vomit off the leather. Who knows what these two eat.

There’s no sign of the cloud. The Gray Man’s checking the rearview window again when Cheng2 yells, “Look out!”

An army of bodiless clay hands and feet swarm the car. The Gray Man slams on the brakes. The car skids to a stop, sideways across the road. The hands form fists. They shatter the rear windshield and drag Cheng2 out. He screams as he’s pulled into the trees. His friend throws open his door and runs after them.

The Gray Man unbuckles his seatbelt and pushes open his door. He steps out of the car slowly.

"You," a voice coos. The Gray Man turns his head calmly. Seeing no source, he schools his expression.

"Mackey. Lovely to see you again."

 

* * *

 

The hands and feet drag Cheng2, uncaring whether he hits every tree root and rock along the way. He hears Rutherford calling after him. He tries to fight the monsters covering him but, truth be told, how do you fight something that has no vulnerable parts and nothing to grab onto?

“Let me go!” he says, clawing at the hands attached to his face. They move, lifting this finger and that to avoid him, making a scratchy, clay-on-clay sound that Cheng2 can’t be mistaking for laughter. “Get off me!”

For his trouble, he gets a clay hand around his throat, squeezing tight. After that, Cheng2 lets himself be dragged.

For a time, he tries to count the trees as they pass. He decides, ultimately, that this is pointless, so he stares up at the sky. Then he closes his eyes and tries, in the worst possible conditions, to take a nap.

He comes to when the hands deposit him in a heap at Jiang’s feet.

 

* * *

 

Jiang stares down at the bundle of Broadway uncomfortably close to his Doc Martens. A collection of terra cotta hands and feet chitter and roll away.

Mackey regards this as completely normal and undeserving of commentary. They’re back on the path, only a few feet from where Jiang found the first mannequin. It’s still there, a bit of horrorterror gazing up at the tree tops.

She let them find her. Jiang won’t pretend otherwise.

“Is this a gift?” he asks, nudging Cheng2 with his toe. Cheng2 looks blearily up at him. “Get up,” Jiang tells him.

Mackey beams. “To me, perhaps. Now, Skovron, do be a dear and help me out.”

Skov’s rage could paint icicles on every branch in this entire forest.

“I don’t work for you,” he bites out.

"It’s a little late to be rethinking your choice, dear."

“We never made a deal. I didn’t say yes.”

Mackey titters. “You didn’t say no.”

"What?" Jiang looks at Skov, whose skin is stretched tight over his chin, lips white.

"He didn't tell you? The breath of life. I have it. I could have your friend up and running again." Mackey pouts. "But Skovron didn't want that, did he?"

"What's she talking about?" Jiang asks.

"Proko," Cheng2 says, suddenly understanding. "You could have brought Proko back."

Skov doesn't deny it.

"Tell me it's a lie."

She wanted access to Proko. She didn't want to help. What could have done that anyone else couldn't?

“You can’t raise the dead.”

"Perhaps not, but I can raise the dreaming."

"She came to me in the hospital," Skov says, cold eyes fixed on Mackey. "He would have been worse than a forgery."

Swan would have loved to see Proko again. He had always taken the forgeries in stride. But, no. Skov is right. Whatever Mackey could have done, even if it wasn’t a trick, would have been nothing more than a sack of meat dressed up as a human.

Suddenly, Mackey's eyes widen. Her eyes become dark brown, her irises white. Her voice shifts, becoming Carruthers' again.

“We weren’t done talking to your mother,” Jiang says.

"Too bad,” Carruthers replies. “I have to fight you now." With that, he grabs at a stone. Exerting no effort at all, he wrenches it out of the ground, revealing a boulder as large as his own torso. He grasps it between both hands, then, in a show of strength, throws it at the nearest tree. It explodes. "I don't want to but she says I have to."

Skov says you kill a golem by wiping a letter off its forehead. Well, Jiang can see that letter but he sure as shit doesn't know how he's going to get to it.

Skov, being Skov and therefore the most useful person to have around when physical action is needed, swings his rifle off his back and into his arms and shoots the thing in the shins. Carruthers crumples, falling to his knees. His head slumps to his chest.

"Just kidding," he says. He stands up, dirt rising from the forest floor to fill the bullet holes. "I love when people think that'll work."

Skov empties a clip into his chest.

Carruthers takes the shots with a sigh. He straightens up, more dirt trickling up to make him whole again.

"What did I just say?"

"You don't have to fight us," Rutherford says, hands spread out before him. "Look, Cheng2 and I don't want to be here anymore than you do. We're friends. We have Trig together. You remember Trig?" He nods encouragingly.

Jiang rolls his eyes. Clearly, Rutherford has a brilliant future in conflict management.

"You don't want to do this, Ted. Can I call you Ted?" Uncertainty wars with duty on Carruthers' face. Jiang is about to lose his shit. "Ted, this isn't you. You wouldn't fight your friends. And we are your friends."

"They aren't." Carruthers looks at Skov and Jiang.

"You have a point," Rutherford concedes.

Carruthers starts to bare his teeth. He steps forward. Rutherford raises his hands again.

"Ted, Ted," he says. He's a step above groveling now. Jiang wants to punch himself in the pubic bone.

Jiang deeply wishes Parrish were here. Supernatural things are his specialty, aren't they? Parrish would get the trees to do his bidding. They'd tear Carruthers apart, just as they tore the beetles apart.

Or would that not work? Would Carruthers just reform, the magic binding him together making even a quartering a surmountable obstacle?

Carruthers flips his hair and, yep, there's the words Skov was talking about, bright as day. Erase the farthest right character and they'll be good.

How do you erase a character from someone's forehead? Cut it off? There's no chance they'll get that close.

"This isn't working," Skov says, as if anyone thought it was. God, this is a mess. Why did Jiang ever think they could ambush him?

At that moment, Cheng2 does the dumbest thing possible. He yells and rushes the golem. He slams into Carruthers' chest and this time he and the motherfucker does go down. Cheng2 swings at him. He hits again and again, missing half the time, hitting him open-palmed others. It's clumsy and childish and it works. Carruthers seems taken aback by this display.

"What are you?" Cheng2 screams. "You fucking fake, piece of shit bastard! How could you, you pretended to be him, you fucking-"

He continues in this vein while Skov reaches a hand into the waistband of his pants.

"You want to do it?" he asks, turning the handle of a small, imaginary-looking gun towards Jiang.

"No," Jiang says sourly, "but I will."

Guns aren't known for having stories. Cars do, swords do. Guns are disposable tools.

This gun has history. It's the most unique gun ever made, capable of killing everything, never needs reloading. A scared, little boy with the power of dreams created it to kill the monster under his bed, if by "monster" you meant "his father" and "under" "in". Now they're both gone and the gun's still here. They might as well use it.

"The farthest right," Skov reminds him.

"I've got it."

He takes the gun from Skov. Cheng2's still laying into Carruthers. The golem is gathering his wits. He's growing angry. In a moment, he'll throw Cheng2 off him and destroy all of them.

Jiang approaches them carefully.

Carruthers doesn't throw Cheng2 off of him. Instead, he does the only thing that would make Jiang stop. He becomes Proko.

If he had become Cheng, Jiang wouldn't have paused. He would have shot him where he stood.

But Proko.

Jiang's belief has been tested. For months, he's believed that a ghost was following him. At first, he thought it was K. Then he thought it was someone else. Never had he stopped believing a spirit was following him. He went to the psychic's, for fuck's sake.

And Cheng2 claims to have seen him. He went to lengths so much further than Jiang, saw Proko so far from where Jiang saw K. He knows now that the clay discs were behind it but.

He wants to believe.

Now, Proko's homely face gazes up at him and a wound Jiang forgot reopens. He's not a forgery. Every one of Jiang's senses tells him that. This is Proko, how he was, as he was.

Cheng2 sees it, too. He stares at K's gun. His eyes drift to Jiang's face. Horror, terror, every fearful emotion fills those dark eyes.

"Jiang," Proko says, "please."

Jiang presses the gun against his forehead, right where the words were written on Carruthers'. 

"Move," he tells Cheng2.

Jiang pulls the trigger.

The shot hits. There's no way it couldn't.

Proko's head hits the ground. His eyes stare, open and unseeing at the tree-obscured sky. The illusion fades, Proko's face turning into Carruthers'.

"No! How could you-" Blind with rage, Cheng2 makes for him. Rutherford grabs him and holds him back. He murmurs soft words into his friend's ear. Cheng2 says against him.

"Here," Jiang says, handing the gun back to Skov. He closes his eyes, his expression pained. His shoulders slump.

The air reeks of gunpowder.

"Is it dead?" Rutherford asks.

"As much as it can be," Skov answers.

He kicks the crumpled mass of flesh. Layers of illusion are falling away, Carruthers' exterior slowly giving way to the clay mannequin he always was. Looking at it, it's easy to see why Mackey was so jealous. Matthew Lynch is a masterpiece compared to this.

"How does it feel, Mackey," Jiang asks, gazing down at the broken terra cotta, "to know a teenager was better than you ever had a hope of being?"

Once, Seondeok told her son's kidnappers she did not pay for damaged goods. Those words had left a festering wound on Cheng's soul that had never healed and scars on his brain that never would.

Fuck Seondeok. She's a coldblooded bitch who can't be bothered to notice the sharks circling round her son. Her middle son, moreover, the one so like her in every way. So dispensable in her mind.

Jiang will take an intense pleasure in showing her how indispensable Cheng really is.

Carruthers’s pottery skull cracks easily under Jiang's boot. He grinds it into the dirt with satisfaction.

"We should go," he tells Skov.

"Yeah, we should."

 

* * *

 

It's a long walk back to Jiang's car. There's no sign of Parrish or the Gray Man. Jiang's too mentally exhausted to care. Parrish will be fine. The gray man has his own conscience to deal with, letting two kids get dragged off like that. None of it is Jiang's problem, not yet.

Cheng2's been trailing just behind him. It's aggravating, not least because it means Cheng2 wants to talk.

“Proko- how did it…” Cheng2’s voice trails off.

“The magic ran out,” Jiang snaps. “Dream juice can't last forever.” Then, more kindly, “He wouldn’t have wanted to come back.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I knew him. All of him. You know, every one was different.”

That shuts Cheng2 up.

“Was it my fault?” he asks, sounding young and painfully innocent.

Jiang doesn’t know how much of this conversation Cheng2 is following. “He wouldn't have stayed for you,” he decides upon, the words crueler than necessary. “You never meant that much to him.”

Cheng2 fiddles with his hands, right scratching the left's wrist. “I know I wasn't his main but we had a connection.”

Jiang snorts.

“We did. He was going to be somebody and then...”

Jiang studies him. How much did Cheng2 know? He had taken the ghost in stride, perhaps too much.

“I was always jealous of you. No matter what you land on your feet. Nothing bad ever really happens to you.”

Jiang looks at Cheng2 with undisguised abhorrence.

“You don't anything about me,” he grits, “and for the most part it's going to stay that way but know this, Henry fucking Broadway, my life hasn't been easy. Proko was mine before he ever touched you and he was Kavinsky's always. Whatever connection you had was nothing compared to theirs.”

Cheng2 swallows visibly. “Did I get him killed?”

 

* * *

 

"I wasn't aware you were in the protection business now. You, who were going so very many places."

Mackey doesn't know his name. The Gray Man takes that as a point in his favor. She does not know his name. His reputation has always been a strong one. No one would dare touch the Lynch family home after Niall Lynch's execution. Valquez hasn't stepped foot on the East Coast since the Gray Man slaughtered his seven children. They were hard to track down, scattered as they were between three ex-wives and four countries.

"Did you miss my warning, Mackey, about playing with my valley?"

" _Your_ valley?" The woman herself steps out of the treeline and onto the dirt road.

She is a crone as the very few who have ever met her attest. A small, stooped woman with blue rinsed hair, tragic in her comportment but with a fire in her eyes. Whether this is her true appearance or an illusion, no one knows.

"You haven't heard about Laumonier, then."

"I hear everything. Dean." She titters a high, faux girlish laugh. "You'd tell a bunch of children your name. How...innocent."

“It’s only a name.”

“Of course, it isn’t.” Mackey lays an age-spotted hand on her wrinkled breast. “Names mean things. You name a thing and you give it life.”

“Is that so?”

“Would I lie to you?” She holds a hand out. “I’ll give you a gift, _dyn llwyd_ , for coming out to see me. A little something I made all by myself.” An insect buzzes through the air. It circles over Mackey’s head, then drops onto her palm, folding its wings into its exoskeleton. It’s a beetle made out of clay.

The Gray Man doesn't know how- call it professional intuition, if you will- but he knows in that moment it's Mackey standing before him. Some bit of thin-slicing tells him this, for once, is not a full illusion. There is a person under there and that person can be killed.

He pistol-whips her. He grabs the barrel of his gun and slams it across her face and he's on her before she's even hit the ground. The Gray Man has no time for warnings or reasoning. The valley is his. Its people are his. Seondeok's son, Adam Parrish's friend, is therefore his.

The bullets puncture her thin flesh like butter under a hot knife. She sucks in a sharp breath and gags on her own blood. Her hands fall out beside her.

"I only wanted to make Blodeuwedd," she says as she lays dying. Blood trickles from the corner of her mouth. It runs into her blue-gray hair. "I only ever wanted to be Gwydion. I did it, _dyn llwyd_. It took me eighty-seven years but I did it. And that boy did it at fifteen."

It isn't the first time the Gray Man's seen someone die crying. He doubts it'll be the last. 

He begins the necessary work of wiping Mackey's fingerprints and laying her body out where only animals can find her. 

 

* * *

 

"What?" Jiang asks.

"Did I get Proko killed?" Cheng2 repeats.

Skov's gaze is pitying.

"That wasn't who you thought it was," Jiang tells Cheng2. He sounds so, so tired. "That wasn't him at all. You should stay out of the woods." He makes to walk away, tucking the gun into his waistband.

"What does that mean?" Cheng2 asks.

"He wouldn't be here. He wouldn't come back. That," Jiang says emotionlessly, "was a Henriettan joke."

"I don't understand."

"You don't need to. Stay away from the woods, Cheng2." Jiang's expression is embittered. "And the dragstrip. There's nothing for you there."

He and Skov walk away.

There are rare moments in a person's life when they are too shocked to realize that something traumatic has happened. Maybe they process it by going on with life and only coming back to their emotions later or maybe, like Cheng2 is now, they stand stock-still, unable to move, hoping that what just occurred was nothing more than an errant thought.

In his anger, Cheng2 could lash out. He had a purpose. He was going to find Proko’s gravesite and avenge his death.

Now he has to face reality, whatever that is.

Cheng2 knows what happened. He saw it all. His brain simply refuses to allow him control of his motor functions.

Slowly, they come to him, along with Rutherford's worried face.

Eyes wide, Cheng2 turns to face him.

"He killed him." Those are the only words he can say. "He killed him."

"Who?" Rutherford asks kindly.

"Carruthers. Jiang. He had a-" Cheng2 sketches out the gun with his hands. Rutherford was there, his brain reminds him. He knows.

Rutherford looks at him worriedly. "I don't think that's who you thought it was."

Cheng2 knows then that he was right. His arm twinges from a long-healed break.

"I thought he would still be here."

Rutherford's expression says he understands but it isn't so. It can't be. The dead do not walk the earth happily.

"Can we go home?" Cheng2 asks, hugging his arms to him. "I don't want to stay here."

"Yeah," Rutherford says, placing a comforting arm around his shoulders. Cheng2 keeps his eyes down. He can't look Rutherford in the face, not now. There are too many questions to be asked, too few answers Cheng2 can give. "We can do that."


	24. Chapter 24

What do you say after the unspeakable's happened? What do you do when you owe a debt to someone you will never understand?

It isn't a blessing Cheng2 gives but Rutherford tells Cheng quietly that he thinks Jiang could be good for him and Rutherford agrees. They do not speak about a forest or Mackey or why Tad Carruthers vanishes overnight. There are few rumors. An early acceptance to a foreign school, a recall to the gossip's country of choice, an impromptu bout of senioritis. Ronan Lynch hasn't come back, either. These things happen. They'll see Tad around.

SickSteve never truly comes around to Jiang. He's burning through his own issues right now, though, and his problem seems to be with Cheng keeping it hidden more than anything else.

Koh is happy for them. He and Jiang don't talk, don't associate in any way but, every so often, you'll see them nod as they pass each other in the hallways. They've signed their names to the Henry Cheng Safety Accords and neither is interested in pulling out anytime soon.

Ryang and Lee-Squared, if they are any less thrilled than Koh, keep it to themselves.

It is not, for most of the Vancouver crowd, a particularly interesting topic. College is calling. Cheng has been drifting away since fall.

Their little group was never meant to last.

 

* * *

 

Cheng2 doesn't know how Jiang finds him. He didn't tell anyone where he was going and he definitely didn't ask for company.

His fist tightens as Jiang crosses the snowy field towards him. The chain weighs heavily in Cheng2's hand, the ring's raised design almost painful with how tightly it's clenched in the palm of his hand. The metal is warm in his bare, chillblaining hand. He's resolved to hold onto them just a little bit longer.

Jiang comes to stand next to Cheng2. Together, they stare at the murky, ice-edged water.

If you asked Cheng2 whether this pond had always been here, he would have to say he didn't know. Personally, he doesn't think so. He could be wrong. Henrietta has a way of being infinitely surprising.

There are other words for it, probably. Cheng2 doesn't have the energy to search for them. This lake/pond/thing exists here now. If it didn't yesterday, if it's gone tomorrow, so be it. In this space, in this time, it exists.

Jiang breaks the silence. "It'd be a waste if you threw them away. Some local'll fish 'em out, sell 'em to a pawn shop. Probably get a hundred bucks for all that."

Cheng2's fist clenches harder.

"It'd be disrespectful, too. He didn't give them back to you."

Cheng2's teeth grit.

"You should've been there. He was so happy when you gave those to him. We made fun of him for it but did Proko care? Nah." Jiang jangles the keys in his pocket. His half-assed cheer fades away. "He was lonely, I guess. We didn't give it- him enough attention. It was hard on us but I don't think I ever thought about whether it was hard for him, too. Imagine waking up knowing you're supposed to be somebody everyone knows you're not."

Not everyone. Not at first. It was only a dozen or so people, if it was ever that many at all.

"Where were we going, do you know?" Jiang asks, peering up at him from under the raised collar of his jacket. His nose is a bright, cherry red. "You kept saying you had to follow him."

Cheng2 doesn't answer.

Jiang sighs. It seems to encompass so many things. Things like _Rutherford told me you were out here and asked me to check up on you_. Things like _you're a pain in my ass_. Things like _I won everything there was to win and I'm here because I understand and it's the right thing to do_. "That thing wasn't him. I hope you know that.”

"I know."

"Do you? Or does your head know and your body doesn't? Don't throw those away, just 'cause some old bat played a trick on you."

Cheng2 doesn't know what to say.

"Forget it. Keep your gift. They made him happy. I just thought you should know that."

Cheng2 nods.

A cold breeze blows across the surface of the pond, sending ripples across its surface. Dry reeds at the pond's edges hit each other with faint clacks. Strands of grass spin across the surface.

"Do you ever-" Cheng2 pauses, for once fumbling for words, "-hate this town?"

Jiang laughs. It's a breathless, hoarse thing, less human than crow. "All the damn time."


	25. Chapter 25

Cheng2 goes home.

Carefully, he wraps the chain and the ring in a T-shirt and places it in the back of his closet. In a few months’ time, he'll bring this bundle home with him and place it in a box in another closet, where he'll forget it most of the time but not always.

It won't be for many, many years that he brings the jewelry out again, on the eve of Cheng's commitment ceremony/wedding. He'll unwrap it, take the items out, and turn them over in his hands, debating. He'll make his decision.

The next day he'll put them on, the gold almost garish against his skin. He'll the chain hidden and the ring openly, hoping to catch Swan's eye and instead catching Skov's. Other than Gansey and his people, they'll be the only two Aglionby alumni to come.

Rutherford won't be able make it. SickSteve won't receive an invitation. Lee-Squared, Ryang, Koh- well, not every friendship is built to last.

Friendship won't be the word the man formerly known as Cheng2 will use.

Obligation.

That's what it will be.

(Masochism, more like.)

The only familiar face among the sparkling white seats will be Blake Skovron. He'll be barely recognizable in a tux but the metal plates in Cheng2's left arm will ache and he'll see the boy behind the man.

Skov will be alone. Swan won't come because there will be no Swan to come. Cheng2 might have asked. Henry Broadway won't have to.

He'll be the only one of Henry's high school friends to come, so he'll be the last to see Cheng and Jiang together.

They'll look happy.

It'll feel like a tiny shred of Cheng2's soul is dying.

When Skov asks him to dance, laughing, saying, "Here's hoping you don't remember me", arms tan and eyes bright, looking exactly like the boy who kept watch all those years ago, Cheng2 won't hesitate to say no.

He'll walk out and he'll walk away and he'll call Rutherford and say, "Hey, man, it's been a while. You want to get drinks?"

And that will be that.


End file.
